Wings of Frontier
by Calvo
Summary: It's been nearly fifty five years since the Holy Grail War, and the world has changed substantially for Shirou Emiya in the intervening years
1. Soft Landing

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate/Stay Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

...

I let myself through the airlock, my floating gait manoeuvring towards a feet down position before I reach the effects of the gravity field down the hallway. As my feet touch down on the floor, the familiar weight of gravity settles in my stomach and a gaudy holo informs me that the gravity is set to three quarters earth standard. Some of the other passengers on the long haul fold flight land with familiar practice like myself, while a few first timers and young children misjudge their landing and stumble a bit.

I stop to offer a hand to a young toddler on the ground next to me – him and his mother offer broad smiles, which I return before moving towards the immigration controls for Island One of the Macross Frontier colonisation fleet. Holo's light up the walkway, the majority of which are blaring out high def images of Sheryl Nome, the galactic fairy, with subtitles outlining concert dates for her scheduled tour. Some other holo's languish in the background, displaying information for several popular tourist destinations.

Within short order I'm staring politely at a balding immigration official. There was a choice to speed through using automated processing, but over the years I've found it considerably easier to fool a human mind as opposed to a computer. The chance that I'll have to actually perform such an act today is minuscule, but old habits die hard.

"What is your purpose for entering the Macross Frontier fleet?" the official asks as he eyeballs my ID and slots it into a data reader.

"I'm beginning work at a new job," I reply. He hums in a disinterested tone as my ID data is pulled up on a holo in front of him. I scan through it, reading backwards of course, out of boredom.

"What kind of work are you starting on, Mr Emiya?" He continues, pulling my name out of the file. Shirou Emiya – It had been a long time since I had the freedom to use that name. The last instance I wore it was back in the early 40's, and only recently did the electronic trail of that ID die down enough to be used again. It was odd going back to my real name, I mused to myself, but it felt nice to hear it again.

"Contract work," I replied again. Well, it technically _is_ contract work. The stubby official nods with satisfaction, maybe he thinks I'm working in construction or some other low brow job. I do nothing to dissuade him of that as he types away at his keyboard, filling in sections of a secondary holo while he continues to study my ID data.

"You must be the first person today I've spoken to who isn't just here to see Sheryl sing live," he comments distractedly, still typing away. Perhaps it's just this person's attempt to reach a suitable level of customer service, as he clearly doesn't care if I respond or not.

"Is that so?" There's really no need to humour this guy, as he's obviously just going through the motions and doesn't really care. After another moment of silence I get approval to disembark with a nod. The official hands me back my ID and I pocket it quickly before stepping past him. Security is up next, but the checkpoint is little more than a body scanner to check for concealed weapons. I try not to grin as I walk through, knowing full well that in an instant I could arm myself with perfect replicas of several of the most powerful weapons in human history. Once through, I step past yet another swarm of holo's advertising Sheryl's tour and step into the arrival area.

A small crowd of people are hanging around at the exit, but my ride is impossible to miss. He stands head and shoulders above the majority of the crowd, his rough cut features looking bored as he holds a sign out with my name on it. The man himself is wearing what I assume to be an SMS Military Provider uniform, or at least a jacket. There's a slight bulge indicating a concealed firearm of sorts, but his stance is absent of any motivation for violence. According to the information I had gathered for me, this is unusual for the man, but to be fair – he's only coming to pick up a new recruit. I square up and stride towards him, catching his eye with my height and self assured posture.

"Major Ozma Lee I presume," I enquire, offering my hand to him. He accepts the handshake without moving a muscle on his face.

"And that would make you Shirou Emiya wouldn't it?" He turns towards the exit of the spaceport, waving me to follow him. "My car is this way. Welcome to Frontier."

…

After being treated to several minutes of breakneck driving, Ozma finally opened up the line of conversation I had been expecting back in the space port.

"So," he began, shouting over the loud rock he was playing over the stereo, "I've read your file. You seem to be a good pilot."

I resisted the urge to snort. I was an extremely good pilot, but the file he had read was completely fabricated; my 'record' of combat operations with the New U.N. Spacey. Truth be told, I hadn't flown under a true military record since the early 20's, a time when humanity and Earth teetered on the brink of destruction.

"Thank you," I eventually replied, giving away nothing in my facial expressions or body language that would indicate my file was nothing but the truth. Ozma, unsurprisingly, wasn't finished.

"But I can't help but wonder if you're good enough for the kind of work we'll be putting you through," he continued. Undoubtedly he was beginning the hazing that new recruits to his organisation would go through, although his tone had an undertone of true doubt that an experienced squad commander would express when replacing one of his squad. Although a new hires files will give some indication of his skills, it'll say nothing of his personality.

I appreciated that Ozma had an eye for these details – it allowed me to get a grip on his ability as a leader. Still, I had my pride to consider, and it wasn't written in the rulebook that I had to get along with my new leader, only respect him.

"I'll be good enough, you can count on that," I reply gruffly.

Respect is a hard thing to hand out to someone half your age.

The grilling continued all the way to SMS headquarters, and I gave nothing but the image that I was a lifer with a chip on my shoulder looking for better pay rates. The headquarters itself is an admirable set-up, combining headquarters with the docking port for their battleship, saving space in peacetime and allowing for rapid deployment when combat is expected. I was assigned a room in the barracks – surprisingly enough, I was given a single room.

As orientation was planned for tomorrow, I decided to take a shower and go to sleep. As usual, the sight of myself in the mirror still doesn't match any expectations I had for myself at the turn of century. It was nearly sixty years ago that I was introduced to the world of magic, and shortly after that competed in the life or death competition known as the Holy Grail War. Following what I thought would easily be the most brutal time of my life I had settled back into a somewhat normal routine in London with Rin Tohsaka when the unthinkable happened.

The Zentraedi came to Earth.

After a year of almost unnoticeable skirmishes, the planet was nearly obliterated in one fell swoop, eliminating a large portion of, if not all, magi. I certainly hadn't met another one since that time. It was during the Zentraedi blitz that I had a chance to save Rin from the Zentraedi but failed, barely escaping with my own life to one of the shanty towns in the European wastelands. The chance I had to save Rin had saddled me with a debt I didn't care for, which lead to me grudgingly had signing up with the UN Spacey.

It was years ago that I first learned how to pilot a Valkyrie protecting the remnants of humanity from rogue Zentraedi elements, and it was there where I learned to incorporate elements of my magic into the art of piloting. It began with simple stuff, simply introducing reinforcement to the frame in order to temporarily boost performance. However, as I had to keep it to a minimum to keep my talents a secret, I was forced to become a better pilot in order to survive.

But that was years ago, and I had better things to do than reminisce about the past in front of a mirror. I finished shaving my white stubble with a distinct lack of ceremony and made my way back to the bunk to prepare for the next few weeks of 'training.'

…

It was the next day that I met the rest of my squad mates, Mikhail Blanc and Luca Angelloni. It was a Tuesday morning, and I met them in the mess hall during breakfast. Despite my attempts to appear aloof and unapproachable, Luca had spotted me and came bearing down with far too much curiosity for a normal person.

"You must be the new pilot of our squadron?" He asked, oblivious to the aura I was emitting.

I eyed the kid up and down. Curly red hair, very scrawny looking and dressed up in what could only be described as possibly the least fashionable way to wear a school uniform ever, what with the long bobby socks, short brown shorts and brown leather shoes. In addition, he was very clearly below the age of majority in any culture I'd care to name. In summary, I had no idea what on earth he was doing in a place like this.

"_Our_ squadron?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral. "You fly?"

"Oh yes," he replied cheerfully, carefully setting down his tray opposite me and settling in. "I'm Skull Three, Luca Angeloni." He offered his hand over the table for a handshake. I took it and gave it a cursory shake. I found it nearly impossible to get a bite of food for the next five minutes as the young kid peppered me with questions regarding my history, and I answered in a guarded fashion, giving tidbits from my fabricated background. My name was Shirou Emiya; yes, I was born in 2034 on Earth; no I don't remember anything about the Sharon Apple incident (hah); yes, I signed up with the Spacey as soon as I turned eighteen; no, I was not a natural pilot (that one did match up with my actual life story); you bet I worked my arse off to get to where I did; and finally, no, I joined SMS because I was getting tired of following the orders of people with heads stuck up their arses in the Spacey, but I suppose the pay increase helped as well.

And on it went. Somehow, through that rapid questioning Luca managed to finish his bowl of cereal and was halfway through a banana when he spotted the other member of our squadron. Waving his banana in the air, he called to someone over my shoulder. "Michel-sempai! Over here!" I dutifully turned my head over my shoulder and saw a young man in a superficially similar uniform to Luca. However difference in style between the two was the difference between night and day. The blonde young man definitely fell into what I would define as the pretty boy category, and had the tell-tale ear points that indicated he was at least partly Zentran. Pretty boy sat down next to me and put his tray down. He gave Luca a sideways glance and turned to me to stick his hand out.

"I'm Mikhail Blanc, Skull Two. You must be the new replacement," he said. I nodded and shook his hand, taking careful note of the different pronunciation of the name he gave me as opposed to the form Luca used. "Shirou Emiya," I replied, perhaps a bit curtly, but I had never really gotten along well with the pretty boy stereotype since school, when I had nearly been murdered by that slimy rat Shinji. "Judging by the look on your face, I'm assuming Luca has already given you a grilling," Mikhail began, and I spent the barest fraction of a second wondering how he could read that on my face before shrugging it off. I was still wearing the body language that I had hoped would keep people like Luca away in the first place. I tried to relax as Mikhail continued. "So I guess I'll get the details from him later."

Mikail seemed content to listen to Luca needle me for another ten minutes or so before both kids excused themselves to apparently go to school. I almost unconsciously shook my head softly to myself as they walked away. The age of my two wing-mates was astoundingly low for this day and age. Sure, when I first joined up in the aftermath of Space War I kids were joining the Spacey left, right and centre due to the desperate need for warm bodies to fill empty cockpits, but as the human race stabilised it's population again, such recruitment practices had thankfully fallen to the wayside.

War is a terrible thing, and not something to be burdened upon ones so young in my opinion.

As I watched the pair wander off for school, I made a mental note to look into them later – the observation that half my wing were still in school certainly merited some attention. In the meantime, although I was initially worried Luca might some form of counter-intelligence agent, I had the gut feeling that he was simply naturally curious about the world around him, which for better or worse now included myself. Mikhail on the other hand definitely seemed sharper, and I could recall at least two occasions where he had brought the conversation around to a point where the overly curious Luca would ask the questions Mikhail wanted answered.

Still, for all that, any gentle probing would barely scratch the surface of my cover. Once it became clear that my facade of aloofness wouldn't work on my squadmates I had decided on playing a different tack, that of the friendly new recruit. Under normal circumstances I didn't think I could successfully pull off such a transition, but given I was the new blood and knew no-one in the building besides Ozma, it seemed a safe ploy.

Eventually I took off and made my way to the medical facility. At the door I was greeted by Ozma and a dark skinned lady in a lab coat, hands stuffed in her pockets. I straightened up upon reading her rank of First Lieutenant from the shoulder badge and saluted. It wasn't unusual for doctors in armed forces to be given higher ranks than the rank and file to make sure the 'doctor's orders' were carried out so to speak, and while we were of equal rank, I held a huge appreciation for her profession, having spent more than my fair share of time over the past 55 years in hospital beds.

"First Lieutenant Shirou Emiya, reporting for medical and EX-gear fitting," I rattled off. Ozma looked grumpy for no reason that I could fathom – maybe it was just the man's standard posture. The woman looked me up and down, then swung her head towards the door of the examination room, indicating I should enter. "I'm First Lieutenant Canaria Berstein. Let's get the medical started," she replied. We all swung into the examination room. As far as I knew this was just a standard medical, so I had no idea why Ozma was here and voiced the question. "Squad Commander, why are you here?"

Ozma looked at me, looked down at a clipboard full of paper he was carrying and then scratched his head almost sheepishly. "Briefings," he replied. "I'm not one for using the briefing room when there's only two people, so we're doing this now to save time." I nodded in response. Informal yet efficient – I could definitely learn to respect this guy. Canaria motioned to a chair and I sat down, catching a clipboard Ozma had tossed at me. While Canaria busied herself attaching a device to measure blood pressure and heart rate to my arm, I had a look at the clipboard. There was a rather thick wad of paper clamped down on the front, with the cover being a standard looking SMS letterhead and nothing else.

"So, I assume you read the basic company background before you got here," he began, and continued upon seeing my nod, "which means you're aware of our basic tactical assets. You have been chosen to replace a pilot in our Variable Fighter Skull Team, who died in test flight exercises. The purpose of this briefing is to bring you up to date with your wing and expected duties in your employment with us."

I raised an eyebrow when Ozma mentioned test flights, as nothing I had read about SMS indicated that they were engaged in that kind of activity. Indeed, it was impression that military contractors were more likely to be less well equipped than the government run military as they lacked the near unlimited budget to throw at equipment. Ozma flipped over the first page on his clipboard and I followed suit, but my line of sight to the board was immediately blocked as Canaria waved a tongue depressor in my face. "Open up," she ordered, and I promptly did so. Ozma was kind enough to stop reading and look amused as Canaria invaded my throat with the small piece of compressed wood and a torch. Apparently satisfied with the state of my throat, I was then treated to a blinding flash of light as my eyes were checked.

Blinking away the spots in my eyes I looked down at the sheet of paper that was now on the top of the clipboard as Canaria busied herself with the state of health of my ears. "That," said Ozma, with a small note of pride in his voice, "Is your new ride here at SMS." On the clipboard was simply a small scale diagram of a Variable Fighter in all three forms. I let a flash of surprise across my face. I definitely knew the shape of this fighter – The rumour mill was throwing out all sorts of (no doubt inaccurate) information from here to the Rimward Colonies.

"VF-25," the breathed, slightly in awe. My contact on Frontier had mentioned _nothing _about SMS being equipped with units such as this. "The military don't even have these units. How did you..." I left the question hanging.

Ozma kept grinning in reply. "We've been contracted to perform combat performance tests by the designers at L.A.I." he said, and flipped another page on the clipboard. I followed suit and stared blank eyed at a sheet of technical details. "The next 13 pages are the technical details of the unit," Ozma ploughed on, "And I'm not going to hold your hand and explain it all now. I know you've got downtime this afternoon between the hangar tour and your welcome party, so digest it then."

As we flipped through the pages, the one thing that reached my mind was a big 'I.S.C.' printed up the top of page seven, no doubt a reference to the rumoured Inertia Store Converter; the device that the rumour mill asserted would allow human pilots to match the performance of unmanned Ghost vehicles by significantly reducing G force strain on pilots. I was already capable of such a feat through reinforcement of my body, but it might allow me to pull off even more insane manoeuvres. Only a full workout with the unit would tell.

Once past the technical details of the unit (and I couldn't wait to get to my free time and pore over them), the next sheet of paper contained a passport photo of Ozma and his combat service record. "So this is where I quickly give you the once over regarding your wingmates. You, uh," and at this point the Squad Commander scratched the back of head sheepishly, leant backwards against a bench and sent a bunch of bandages tumbling to the floor. As he turned around to pick them up, he continued. "May find your remaining two wingmates... unusual, for this organisation."

I nodded in reply. "Luca Angeloni and Mikhail Blanc. I met them in the mess hall this morning. Or to be more accurate, I was grilled to within an inch of my life by Luca," I said, good naturedly. "If you don't mind me asking, why are children allowed to join and fight in SMS?"

Ozma looked me in the eye. "We never accept people who don't want to join. Those two applied of their own free will and we accepted," he said. I met his gaze and smelt bullshit, so I called him on it as Canaria lead me to a set of scales. "There's more than that," I stated simply. Ozma refused to look ruffled. "They're the best at what they do. Michel is a good pilot and an incredible shot with the Dragunov sniper pod. Luca runs our technical and electronic warfare support and is our liaison with L.A.I. They're both irreplaceable members of the wing," he said, defending his wingmates. At least he seems the kind of team leader who will stick up for his crew, which may make him a very useful ally in the future.

"Still, that's not the whole story," I said flatly. I had maintained eye contact with Ozma through this entire exchange, and as Canaria lead me off the scales and to a measuring tape stretched up a wall I finally saw a flash of discomfort slide onto and then promptly off of his face. "Everyone has some skeletons in their closet," he muttered. It was a true enough statement, and I gave up on the inquisition after that – Ozma was looking ready to hurl me out into the corridor and attempt to break my legs, which would not be a good start to a working relationship. I wanted to push him a little to determine his character, but not _that_ far. Still, after what I went through in my teenage years, I was extremely leery about children in wars. Volunteering for the duty was only slightly better that conscription as well – only a rare few entirely understood what they were getting themselves into, and the rest were usually a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Canaria motioned for me to sit down again and then began efficiently gathering up blood collection materials. Ozma allowed me a few moments of silence to read over everyone's service records. Ozma's was without question the most padded. His first actions were classified. It was suspicious, but there were a lot of possible reasons for that. He was then transferred to the Frontier UN Spacey fleet for few years before they were re-formed into the N.U.N.S. He then spent another five years serving there. His combat record consisted mostly of skirmishes against rogue Zentraedi forces, and with an unusually high number of combat occurrences for that time frame at that. After a promotion to first Lieutenant he left to accept his current position at S.M.S. two years ago and his flight time began to turn from direct combat operations to scouting and pathfinding for the fleet.

By all accounts he was a fairly skilled pilot, earning his ace status in his early (non-classified) actions with the old Spacey, and having stayed alive for eleven years in combat operations, which made me glad that I could trust him in combat at least.

As Canaria finished drawing my blood I flicked over to Michel and Luca's records. They were considerably less full, having shown about a year's worth of scouting missions and three combat missions, all in the past month. Michel's kill count was impressive, having managed to just reach ace status on his last mission. His simulation results were impressive too. Luca on the other hand had the unenviable job of hanging back and providing combat support and had no kills to his name.

"Time to fit your EX-gear," Canaria said, pulling my attention away from the clipboard, just as I was about to flip to the next section. Ozma shrugged and we followed Canaria out of the surgery and down a couple of doors. The room we entered had a metal pedestal in the middle of the room surrounded by an open modesty screen. "Jump on that and take your clothes off," Canaria ordered. "Oh, and give your clipboard back to Ozma for the time being."

I dutifully handed my clipboard over to Ozma and stepped behind the modesty screen. To be honest, I felt like doing a little dance; while I had been in possession of a civilian EX-gear since they went into production almost a decade ago, the tailor fit military suits were impossible for me to get a hold of, seeing as I wasn't a part of the N.U.N.S. By all accounts the military version had almost double the available power compared to the civilian models and built in hover units on the legs to allow for better flight control. Perhaps the only unfortunate part in all these upgrades is that the extra armour may limit my mobility when in close combat, which may necessitate a few... alterations when I get some time to myself with it. Having removed and folded my clothes neatly and reporting that fact to Canaria, she then got me to stand on two footprints in the middle of the pedestal.

"This should only take a few minutes," her voice informed me over the screen, "So just stand as still as possible." A trio of scanning lasers extended on mechanical arms and began sizing my body up, and I fell into a state of mediation for the purposes of keeping my body still. Sure enough, barely two minutes had passed when the lasers folded back down and Canaria allowed me to put my uniform back on. Once out of the screen the red haired medic marked a tick on her clipboard. "We're done here, your EX-gear should be complete by the end of the week."

"Thank you," I replied with a small bow. Canaria responded by walking out the door, offering a small wave as she disappeared around the corner. I turned to Ozma who handed me my clipboard back. "I guess we'll finish this in one of the briefing rooms then. There isn't much left to cover anyway, so follow me," he said.

We launched ourselves into a series of seemingly empty corridors. As we took a right turn, Ozma came to a sudden stop right in front of me, almost causing me to slam straight into his back. "Why _heeeello_ there Ozma," called a disconcertingly crooning male voice. "Hey Bobby," was his reply, seemingly unruffled by whoever had managed to pitch his voice to the worst kind of mix between Illya and her Servant. "What're you up to?" the Squad Commander continued. "I'm off today," the voice positively crooned, "so I'm going shopping. Want to come play?"

"No thanks Bobby," the Squad Commander replied, "I'm showing the new guy the ropes." At this point the mysterious being on the other side of Ozma must have realised that the greying Squad Commander wasn't alone. So far I had been trying not to imagine what being could possibly make such a voice, and I was slightly disappointed when an afro head popped out followed by a calculating face. As he gave me a once over, I could not help but feel almost _naked_ somehow, and managed to suppress a shudder.

"Uh, hi," I managed to weakly offer as Ozma stepped aside and I got a full view of the man the Squad Commander was conversing with. How was it possible for a man to show that much skin? He was planning to go shopping like that? The being known as Bobby ignored me completely.

"Oooh, he's a ruggedly handsome one isn't he," he said to Ozma, who looked amused. Surely I wasn't wearing my thoughts on my face like some kind of kid, was I? I raised my hands to my face and used my fingertips to probe. Open mouth, wide eyes. Damnit.

Ozma began the introductions. "First Lieutenant Shirou Emiya, meet the Helmsman of the Quarter, Captain Bobby Margot." Bobby waved. I recovered enough to throw a salute, even though it wasn't necessary seeing as Bobby was off-duty. Bobby waved it off with an airy hand wave and a rather creepy smile that I read as _no need for salutes among my friends._ I could almost imagine the wink! "Bobby, this is Shirou." The afro offered a hand out and without a trace of the playfulness he was showing earlier and shook mine firmly. "Pleased to meet you," he said, "We're glad to have you here with us."

With that, he turned back to Ozma and wound the playfulness up again with a wink. "Well if you fine gentlemen won't join me, I guess I'd better be on my way." With that he sauntered off with a wave, and I was left mentally scratching my head. Ozma looked at me with a knowing grin on his face.

"Yeah, Bobby can be like that. Don't let the act fool you, he's a first class helmsman and not that bad of a guy. He just likes stirring up the new people."

With that, Ozma took off again and three corridors later we were in a briefing room, looking at the clipboard. What I was looking at was something that made the command for me to come the Frontier fleet a lot more sense.

"These," Ozma said, without a hint of emotion in his voice, "are beings we call Vajra."

This was something I already knew. Part of my job description was to maintain tabs on any and all threats to humanity, and the Vajra ranked pretty highly on that list. Ozma launched off on a spiel regarding everything known about the Vajra, while I listened with only half an ear – I was fairly certain my knowledge on the topic was a bit broader than his. First officially encountered nearly two decades ago in 2040, the Vajra were a race of insectoids who had a tendency to wipe out the Spacey's scouts, although I had a sneaking (but unverifiable) suspicion that the Vajra were behind the disappearance of the SDF-2 Megaroad way back in 2016.

Currently the most significant contact with the Vajra that I was aware of was the destruction of the 117th Large-Scale Research Fleet. If I could recall correctly, the fleet was researching all manner of alien diseases and virii when the Vajra seemingly dropped in out of no-where, blew the living hell out of it and set back research in that field by five years.

"This stuff is classified information, which explains why you haven't heard of them before," Ozma continued, looking me in the eyes. Damn straight it was classified, I thought to myself. Getting information from my contacts in N.U.N.S. about Vajra attacks usually required a bit more palm greasing than usual and was a sore point for me. At least it looked like I'd be able to get some first hand combat information sometime soon.

"As you can see, there are two observed combat types," said Ozma, and I scanned both forms on the clipboard in front of me. They matched up with my knowledge on the Vajra, a smaller, yellow bug and a larger red shelled version. Included was also a scale diagram of a VF-25 in battloid mode for size comparison purposes. There were no marks indicating weak spots or preferred targeting areas, nor a list of known weaponry. Instead of a list of known weaponry for both insectoids, there were a number of postulates tagged to various portions of the Vajra diagrams. One particularly interesting one was attached to a large rod that appeared to be connected to the larger Vajra's back. 'Possible anti-ship beam weapon?' read the tag. I really hoped it wasn't. That kind of firepower on a fighter sized enemy would make it very difficult to defend fleet ships.

I interrupted at this point so as not to let on that I was already in the know regarding the Vajra. "Squad Commander, is there no other information on the specs of the enemy?" Ozma sighed and looked forlorn for a second before he recovered. "We have no concrete data on the Vajra. Our only information comes from recovered flight recorders from downed VF's or the anecdotal evidence from surviving pilots. If we come up against Vajra I would expect one of our highest priorities would be to obtain a sample, living or otherwise for the eggheads in xenobiology," he replied, and I nodded in understanding.

"We are moving into areas where we are expecting to run into these damn insects, so I'd be expecting you'll get a chance to find out first hand what these things are like," the grey haired Squad Commander continued. "Apart from the Vajra, our other duties typically involve engaging rogue Zentraedi forces and scouting the fleet path. Now, I think that just about covers the briefing," he finished up, flipping the papers on his clipboard back to the first page and extending his arm to take my own board.

"Excuse me," I began politely as I handed the clipboard back, "but you implied there that I would be the one getting first hand experience, not both of us. Wouldn't you also be getting that experience?"

The Squad Commander sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I was a pilot with the Spacey at the 117th Research Fleet," he said in a soft voice. He sounded almost regretful, an odd emotion to have unless he lost something or someone he cherished there. "I've already gotten my first hand experience." He straightened up and began to walk out the door. "So it's time to deal out some payback," he stated loudly, as if trying to make up for his sudden character change two seconds ago. "Take it easy Shirou," he said with a backhanded wave as he walked out the door, leaving me in the briefing room.

…

The next two days were a flurry of simulations, as neither my EX-gear nor my bird were ready. The VF-25 that was to be my unit (which by then I had found out wore the official moniker of Messiah) was still in the process of being delivered by L.A.I. and there was not a whole lot I could do to speed up the process, despite the fact that the mere thought of wanting to give this bird a good shakedown was making me slightly weak at the knees. I was informed by Luca that the model coming for me was the VF-25F model, with a small modification to test a new modular cockpit design. Likewise, the EX-gear wouldn't get here any faster by me metaphorically hanging around the post box, but my civilian suit was compatible with the system and as such allowed me to hit the simulators.

And wow, was I impressed.

The I.S.C. was definitely the highlight of the system. While I had long been used to manoeuvring VF's at higher G's than they'd been rated for, the VF-25 had far exceeded the current VF-171 Nightmare's in terms of agility. After flight training in the simulators I had been pitching myself against high numbers of Nightmares, Quadluuns and old school Regults, which I still believed to be the pinnacle of Zentraedi weaponry for their men. The only difficulty posed by VF-25 was toning down my abilities so I would seem simply the above average 25 year old pilot I was posing as.

The transformation system was a wonderful improvement over the Nightmare as well. A series of electromagnetic locks and actuators cut the transformation time down from four seconds to just over one, a concept that was giving me all sort of ideas for new tricks, especially against the powered suits.

And so it was that I had just stepped out of the simulator box after a two hour session with Ozma (the man was _good_, but I was certain had this not been formation practice my extra forty years of skill would have done him in) and found myself staring at a uniformed maintenance chief. He looked upbeat as he introduced himself. "First Lieutenant Emiya, I'm Steve Robbs, the crew chief in charge of maintenance on your unit," he explained, "and I'm pleased to report that we've received the final parts and put her together. Thought you might like a look."

Robbs seemed like an earnest man as he began chatting on the way back to the hangars. Good crew chiefs were a valuable commodity for me and I liked to try and get along with mine as much as possible. If the pilot respected his crew and got to know them well, that friendship could mean the difference between an extremely tight frame and well tuned engines or a few loose screws and a shoddy job. Seems as though Robbs had been transferred from being second in command of Ozma's crew and was excited about being charge of his own bird. The rest of my crew were apparently a mixture of new hires and transfers from other crews, so hopefully a modicum of experience would blend into the newbies. We rounded the blue nose cone of Michel's sniper variant VF-25G and there, in all her resplendent glory, was my new ride.

Despite the myriad monitoring equipment being attached to what seemed like every possible digital connection port, she was _beautiful_.

"There she is," said Robbs, almost reverently, "beautiful, isn't she?" Apparently the crew chief and I were on the same wavelength at that point in time. I strode over to the bird, introducing myself to two of the crew as I passed them, and put my hand on the underside of the nosecone.

"Trace on," I murmured, allowing my odo to thrum through a single circuit. "I'm sorry," said Robbs, who'd been two steps behind me, "I didn't catch that."

With my magic circuit activated, I split my attention between what I was doing with the VF-25 and replying to Robbs. "Nothing, just talking to myself," I replied softly. As I kept my hand on the VF, it began to form up in my head as a wireframe model, simple parts interconnecting to become engine lines, control avionics, weapons systems and hundreds of other complex components, which in turn began combining to become the entire unit. I began walking around the frame, under the wings, around to the engines, keeping my hand on the VF at all times. I could vaguely feel Robbs follow me around as I built the image up in my head, taking special note of the stress points that would be the most effective targets for Reinforcement. These tended to concentrate around the wings and tailplane, although there was a curious weakness under the engine at the leg joint that I guessed was simply a manufacturing error. Correct application of Reinforcement there could provide significant acceleration gains while in GERWALK mode. As I trailed around to the other side of the plane and under the other wing, my Structural Grasp completed.

"Oh yeah," I said to Robbs as I left my hand drop from the VF, no doubt looking all for the world as though I was in awe from a simple once over of the plane, "she's one marvellous piece of machinery."

"Want to jump in the cockpit for a few minutes?" he asked me, and I didn't waste any time scrambling into the cockpit. As I sat down, my civilian EX-gear interfaced with the cockpit controls, locking the exo-skeleton into place in the cockpit and freeing my arms and legs to play with the controls. The simulator was remarkably accurate in replicating the controls found in the cockpit, and I whistled with appreciation as the unit gave me power to test the avionics.

"Stand clear guys, I'm going to give the avionics a quick run through," I stated over the external speakers. After using the external cameras to confirm my maintenance crew had backed away, I checked the ailerons, flaps, rudder and trim controls in quick order. Satisfied, I opened the cockpit and jumped out to be greeted with broad smiles across the faces of the maintenance crew. Looks like I wasn't the only one excited by my new unit arriving. I busied myself with introductions and had just finished up as Ozma wandered over..

"How's the VF-25?," Ozma asked me amiably as he wandered up, nodding to Robbs.

"Seems pretty much like the simulators," I replied with a grin on my face, "can't wait to give it a spin."

Ozma's face widened into a grin as well. Maybe there was some unknown feature or bounded field attached to the Messiah that caused everyone nearby to break into smiles and see the awesome side of everything. Something for me to document later, maybe.

"Speaking of simulators," Ozma began, as his grin became strikingly predatory, "we've still got another two hours to go!" He swiped to grab my arm, which I deftly side-stepped, throwing him slightly off balance. I quickly turned to Robbs, who was still waiting around for any last minute instructions before getting back to work. "Robbs, could you double check the thruster line through the left wing?" I asked, aware that my time in the cockpit did not extend to checking the fuel line. It was something I had picked up while performing the Structural Grasp earlier. It was only a loose connection in the line near the fuselage, but it would drop thruster power to that wing by five percent, and I liked my VF's to run at (or preferably above) their listed specs.

Robbs nodded and turned away with a wave, and I finally allowed Ozma to land a vengeful hand on my arm and drag me back towards the simulators.

…

The initial test flight for my VF-25 was a series of shakedown tests performed once my EX-gear had been delivered to me. Robbs and his boys had done a wonderful job with the unit, making the shakedown a mere formality with no obvious faults to report. After the landing the crew had swarmed the VF, hooking up computers to external digital connection ports to check for any issues that may have developed during the flight, and I left them to it.

The next day I received the all clear from the bridge to perform stress testing on the new frame. This was the testing I was really looking forwards to. As I jumped in the cockpit, Robbs offered me a piece of encouragement. "Give it hell Shirou, we've tuned it to perform at one hundred and ten percent!" I flashed him a thumbs up in acknowledgement and was soon out in the vacuum, powering towards the designated testing area. The test involved performing a number of high G manoeuvres while measuring the stress on both my body (through what I assumed were data collectors in my flight suit) and on the frame itself.

"Trace on," I murmured to myself, opening a few of my circuits to provide a flow of odo. Previous experience had taught me that it was always better to be prepared when entering combat situations, as there might not be enough time between opening circuits and applying Reinforcement before I blacked out. With that, I pushed power away from the main drive engine into the required vector thrusters to pull into a tight loop. Perhaps the toughest part of this stress test was continually stringing together high G moves without exceeding the maximum rated velocity of VF-25, but a number of repeating split-S turns seemed to fit the bill. By the sixth turn I'd reached 20G - the effect on myself wasn't noticeable, as the I.S.C. was feeding me a steady 2G's of force and storing the remaining forces. Out of the corner of my eye I could read the capacity of the storage system filling up fast, which I countered by applying Reinforcement to my whole body and overriding the system to feed me 4G's of constant force, which I could barely feel under my Reinforcement.

"Skull-4, you're operating above the safety threshold," came the no-nonsense voice of Monica Lang, one of the Quarter's operators, courtesy of a holo popping up on my H.U.D.

"Noted," was my simple reply. If they weren't going to order me to stop it though, then I was going to push it. After all, this was a stress testing, and one of the best opportunities to determine the limits of this VF outside of combat.

I had no problems maintaining that level of force however, and within another three minutes of continuing turns the force storage system reached it's limits. I could feel the G's begin to unceremoniously dump themselves upon me, and although I could easily up my self-Reinforcement to take some more punishment, it might provoke some interesting questions from the flight support crew later. With a last yank on the stick I levelled out and cut main engine power. I used the vector thrusters to flip the VF a half rotation and set the engines to provide a 2G burn back towards the fleet. Not that this was taking me any closer – the velocity I had achieved while looping was throwing me further away from the fleet than the engines could instantly counter. As I watched, the stored forces bled away from the indicator bar.

"Skull-4 to Quarter. Requesting permission to repeat the previous manoeuvre with the intent of testing airframe stress."

The reply was not quite instantaneous, but it did come. "Permission granted Skull-4, don't throw a hip joint!"

"Thanks Lam, I'll try to avoid that," I replied dryly. At that point the I.S.C. hit the zero mark and once again I found myself turning the airframe into a tight turn. I pushed past 20G's in the first turn and was up to the rated operating limit of 27.5G halfway through the second turn. At that point I flooded my odo into the Messiah's frame, concentrating around the weak points I noted almost a week earlier.

"Disengaging limiters," I reported back the Quarter, and down they went. I kept pushing power into the thrusters to tighten the loop.

"Alright Shirou," came Robbs voice, by way of holo, "we're monitoring frame stress now. Stop when we tell you to."

"Roger," I replied and pushed past 30G's. I was wary now and increasing the forces much more steadily than before, as I didn't have the time or concentration to spare to monitor the VF myself, so I had to give myself enough room to respond to Robbs command.

I was told to stop once I'd touched 35G, a definite record for any VF I had flown. I loosened the loop a little and then dropped the battloid legs to provide heavy counter-thrust to arrest the manoeuvre.

The rest of the stress test wasn't quite as exciting to me now that I had determined the effective limits for the VF-25. By the time I was on my way back to the fleet I had lost count of the number of high acceleration transformations and high G evasive manoeuvres I had performed. I left the VF-25 in the hand of Robbs' crew, who by now I had judged as extremely proficient in looking after the unit. I jumped out of the cockpit and chatted amicably with the crew for a few minutes about the test as they set up their equipment. It was definitely good to get along with these guys, the VF-25 had been a smooth ride from start to finish today.

Eventually I excused myself and emerged from the showers in a fresh uniform. I was supposed to attend a debriefing was Ozma and Luca so I headed in the direction of the briefing rooms. Near the second common area I ran into a green haired girl dressed in civvies. If I had to guess her age, I would put it at fifteen, maybe fourteen. In any case, she definitely wasn't a member of S.M.S., nor did she appear like a prospective client, which immediately put me on guard.

"Can I help you?" I offered warily, eyeing her from top to bottom. Maybe the girl was lost, looking for another business nearby.

Or maybe that's what she wanted me to think.

"You," she said accusingly, flinging a finger so close to my eyes I could make out the fingerprint, "You're new here aren't you?"

That threw me off guard slightly. That would imply she was familiar with a good proportion of the staff here at S.M.S., so maybe she was the daughter of someone who worked here. I had not yet had the chance to put together decent information on the families of the staff, so it would be a reasonable assumption for anyone who would run into her.

Damn, this girl was good. Who was she working for?

"Yes," I replied guardedly, giving away no information. "Who are you? Is there anything I can help with?" My offer of help would seem innocent enough to a bystander, but in the business of clandestine meetings and information gathering there were certain niceties to be observed provided the agents involved weren't trying to actively murder each other.

I curled my hands around invisible hilts. I opened my magic circuits. It could still come to that.

The girl smiled brightly, retracting her hand to behind her yellow dress and leaned forward slightly. No doubt I was going to get a fake name and a request for directions to another building close by. Behind me my heightened senses allowed me to hear a door creak open far down the corridor.

"I'm Ranka Lee," she said. I was barely listening. I knew where to cameras in here to disable were and was preparing an assault. "Have you seen my brother recently? His name is Ozma Lee."

Behind me I could hear boots tromping heavily down the corridor as someone carried themselves with great pace towards this confrontation. Something then clicked in my head.

"Wait," I somehow managed to get out after a second or two of shock. "You're the Squad Comman-"

That's as far as I got before I felt someone barrel into the small of my back, knocking the words from my mouth and bearing me to the ground.

…

Authors notes:

So, probably like quite a number of people who read Gabriel Blessing's work, the thought of dropping Shirou into some other work seemed to appeal to my sense of awesome. So here we are. I plan to roughly take it as one episode of Macross Frontier = one chapter, but figured I needed a small bit of exposition to explain how Shirou fit into the shoes of the character I decided to replace for him. Three weeks and a lot of words later, said chapter decided it was not going to be small and had to be put to a halt somewhere, so here it is.

I guess the only thing to say here is to expect a slow-ish pace because I'm fairly busy, but hopefully no every chapter will run into 8.5k+ word count!


	2. Close Encounter

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

As I fell under the body weight of whoever jumped me, I twisted. My mind was already prepared for the Tracing and it took barely a moments effort to push the odo from my circuits into the form of Kanshou and Bakuya, the twin falchions that would form the basis of my counterattack. Somewhat fortunately for all parties involved, I managed to get a glance at my attacker just before the Tracing was ready to materialise, and I let it drop. Squad Commander Ozma and myself then finished the arc we were tracing to the floor and landed with a heavy thump.

I saw a flash of relief slide over Ozma's face, which was quickly replaced as the Squad Commander looked away to his left guiltily. Over the man's shoulder I could see the green haired girl's eyes widen in shock. "Brother!" she exclaimer, pitching her voice an octave higher from when she was speaking to me earlier. "What are you doing?"

As Ozma disentangled himself from the human knot we had become on the floor, he mouthed two words to me - Shut up. Now that he was here as a witness I had no intention to begin an interrogation of this girl who claimed to be his sister, so I decided to play it out according to Ozma's scenario.

"Oh hey Ranka, you're here early," Ozma said cheerily. For some reason I couldn't fathom, the man was sweating. Whatever was going on, Ozma was definitely acting like a kid caught with his hand in the figurative biscuit tin.

"Yeah, Nanase said she had to do some family stuff after work, so we couldn't go the mall. Who's this guy?"

And with that, the accusing index finger was flung in my direction again. Ozma glanced to me then back to his sister. The Squad Commander's actions and words had all but confirmed it for me: the girl was actually his sister.

"This is Shirou Emiya, the new pilot in Michel and Luca's squadron," he explained. Odd that he wouldn't label it just as his squadron. "I've got to quickly chat to him about his, uh, taxes. Isn't that right Shirou?" he continued on. There was something very odd going on here I deduced. For starters, Human Resources had already dealt with my payroll and taxes (My pay was being shuffled into a new account that I had set up especially for my job. Money was of no particular importance to me anyway). Secondly, he was tip-toeing around his sister and clearly trying to get us away before I could open my mouth and I guess somehow put my foot in it.

I nodded.

"Right," continued the greying man, clearly forcing his tone into some semblance of cheeriness. "So when I finally saw Shirou, I ran to catch up to him and tripped!"

Okay, this was clearly getting out to the very far end of believable, and it looked as though the green haired girl wasn't having a bar of it, judging by the roll of her eyes the minute Ozma looked away. I decided to end the farce.

"Alright, let's get this done quickly Squa-" I began and was quickly cut off as Ozma shot me a death glare, forcibly grabbed my arm and turned us very quickly down a corridor. "Just wait there for a few minutes Ranka," he called over his shoulder, "this won't take long!"

Just personally, I didn't think Ozma's scenario was planned out very well.

We left the not very amused Ranka in the common area. Ozma had dropped my arm and as soon as we were out of earshot he began checking out the rooms we were walking past. At the first empty one, he keyed the door and we let ourselves in to a bit of unused office space. I immediately turned around and eyed Ozma. "What was _that_ about?" I asked with a decent slathering of curiosity.

To his credit, the man managed to look a little bit sheepish. "It's a bit of a complicated story that I don't really have time to get into now, seeing as I'm apparently going to have to spin some damage control pretty soon," he replied, scratching the back of his head. "But the important thing to remember is that Ranka thinks I'm here working the personnel department. She'll react very badly if she finds out I'm still in the cockpit."

"How badly?" I asked, my curiosity well and truly piqued. Most kids with family in the military understood what was going on to some degree, so I found it odd that Ozma had to go to these lengths to keep his true occupation hidden from her. Ozma stomped down on further lines of enquiry however.

"Badly enough for me to order you to act as though I'm not a flyboy when she's around, until further notice."

I straightened up and snapped a salute. "Yes sir!" I shot back. Must be pretty serious then.

Ozma checked his watch and sighed. "I promise I'll explain it at a better time, but for now I've gotta leave you. I'll have to catch up with you for a debriefing later, but you'd better not keep Luca waiting too long," he told me. I nodded in reply and he walked out the door. "See you later," he said as he waved over his shoulder. I was coming to think that Ozma never actually said goodbye with his face to a person, what with the amount of times I'd seen him turn around before waving in the past ten days. I wandered out the door after him and headed out to find Luca.

* * *

Over the next few days I was grounded again as my ground crew worked on both tuning up the Messiah and working on switching the cockpit modules, from the standard single seater to the dual seater. The second seat in the dual seater module took up the space required for the computers for the slave control system, basically making the dual seater less useful in combat thanks to the loss of the slave system. The trade off was fairly straightforward though; the dual seater allowed for more advanced training than the simulators could provide, and also letting us run V.I.P. escorts in the Messiah.

It took them a day to practice the switch, and less than a day to put the single seat cockpit back in. By the time the Friday evening rolled around, I found myself chatting with Robbs at the end of our shifts, thoroughly sick of simulators. Apparently the dual seat cockpit was currently sitting in my unit, the last change occurring to demonstrate the process to the other maintenance crews, and they left it in there because it was an hour from knock off time.

"So that's how she stands at the moment," Robbs confirmed, and I nodded. My Messiah was apparently in good shape and would be moved to active deployment on Monday, as soon as the the single seat cockpit had been refitted.

"Thanks for the update," I replied cordially, "be seeing you around." I finished, with the intent to turn around and head back to the barracks. It seemed like there was nothing else to do, so I figured I might try get a little more research done on my terminal. I'd almost cleared the majority of the S.M.S. as being in the state I like to call 'not-going-to-spontaneously-stab-me-in-the-back', so I figured I could knock over a few more profiles in the evening. Robbs had obviously pre-empted my actions, because he already launched into his next sentence before I'd rotated more than five degrees.

"Hey Shirou, we're heading out for a few drinks after this, want to come?"

I stopped. Maybe I _could_ afford to start scouting out Frontier for information and informants – start building an information gathering network, so to speak. As cliché as it is, bars and pubs tended to be the right place to begin – my ability to find out anything that was happening in Eden within half an hour began with simply meeting the right person in the Exchange bar in Capital City. There was also the chance for me to feel out some of the staff in person, rather than as information on a holo.

"Who's 'we'?" I asked cautiously. No point in wasting time if there were three or four people making a showing.

"Pretty much all the ace squadron maintenance crew rocks up for an hour or so, then the guys with families tend to filter out slowly after that," he informed me. I nodded, tallying up the numbers in my head. Seven to eight people per unit, times three Queadluuns and four VFs...

"Do you guys just hire out a bar or something?" I asked, pitching my tone up to inflect a small amount of disbelief. That seems like an awfully large amount of people to inflict on any establishment early in the evening. Robbs shrugged as though to imply it wasn't that big of a deal.

"We have the back bar at O'Malley's for happy hour every Friday – we get a bit of privacy to enjoy ourselves and they make a better than expected profit for early Friday evenings, it's win-win."

I nodded. O'Malley's was an Irish pub about two blocks away – the closest bar to headquarters. "Let me change," I told him, "and I'll be right there."

And so it was that twenty minutes later I found myself in civvies, pushing through several holo's touting the schedule for Sheryl Nome's tour, which apparently started tomorrow afternoon at the event stadium on the border of Griffith Park and the Shibuya district. Eventually the holo's got the picture and buggered off so I passed through towards the back bar, where I was greeted by a chorus of cheers.

Huh. Looks like they beat me here.

I was quickly outfitted with a jug of beer and a glass, which I filled with fifty years of practised ease. I easily integrated myself into the group next my maintenance crew. Although the bar seemed to be split into a number of groups, there seemed to be no unifying factor that put individual people in whatever group – a sign of a well integrated crew. I had slid myself in next to Robbs, seeing as he was the one who invited me, and was making small talk when a distinctly female voice boomed in from the entrance.

"Couldn't wait for me, could you guys?"

The voice would definitely not win any singing awards – although it was definitely feminine, it was also _definitely_ full of gravel. I was facing away from the door, so in the spirit of friendly inquisition I turned my head and raised an eyebrow at Robbs. He shot me amused grin and went back to his beer, so I turned my head the rest of the way around to take size of the newcomer. Or newcomers, as it turned out.

Framing the doorway was a medium sized woman, wearing an S.M.S. jacket over jeans and a light shirt. Two distinct features labelled her as at least part Meltran – her bright red hair (Meltran's tended to come with distinctly non-human hair colours, and that hair was red all the way to the roots) and the pointy ears. She dominated the scene, hands on hips, looking around the bar with a smile on her face. Even though we hadn't met each other, thanks to my constant digging through S.M.S. files I recognised her as a micronized Ramaria Rerenia, one third of the Pixie squadron, our elite Queadluun squad.

Behind her, looking a lot less comfortable, was a taller Meltran. Again, her species was given away by the pointy ears and bright hair colour (pink, in this instance). Her stance was hunched and one hand appeared to be grasping the other behind her back. It was hard to gauge what the source of her discomfort was, but by the way she was trying to hide behind the shorter pilot, I quickly guessed that she had been dragged along by Ramaria. Going from the files I'd already checked through, this one appeared to be Nene Rora, which would bring the Pixie squadron representation at this bar to two thirds of the total.

Ramaria, apparently satisfied she had all the attention she was likely to get, continued. "Look at who I finally convinced to come along," she boasted, and stepped aside to more better reveal Nene. That declaration got the S.M.S. members who had yet to shower their attention on the new arrivals to turn around, and I observed a slightly incredulous widening of the eyes from Robbs as he swung around and saw Nene standing there.

The poor girl was apparently not used to being the centre of attention and wilted under the pressure, a rosy red creeping in around her face, before ducking back behind Ramaria without saying a word. There was a pause for a few seconds, then abruptly the bar broke into a rambunctuous cheer. Ramaria, grinning like a cat, picked a random table and dragged her pink haired victim up to it. I left the machinations of the Pixie squadron pair to raise an eyebrow at Robbs.

"What's all that about?" I asked, bringing my glass up to my mouth.

"A few guys in the Pixie crews were trying to get Nene to come join us a while back. When Ramaria caught wind of the idea she made a bet that she could get her to come before her crew could. Looks like she's get the cash to be buying a few drinks tonight," the maintenance chief replied sagely.

"Do the other pilots come here a lot?" I questioned him, mostly out of curiosity. Whether they did or not really didn't overlap with tonight's goals in the explicit sense, but it was a way to keep the conversation flowing.

"Not really," Robbs said, raising a closed fist and rolling his eyes skywards in thought. "Mikhail and Luca are under-age," he stated as he raised two fingers, "Klan usually takes classes on Friday nights," he continued, raising another finger roofwards, "and the Squad Commander always goes home to take care of his sister," the middle aged man concluded, raising one final finger. Klan was the leader of the Pixie squadron, their missing member tonight. A part time university student, she struck me as a bit of an idealist when Ozma introduced us earlier in the week, which I thought an odd trait for her position. I'd already checked her profile out and there was nothing else worth noting there, so maybe she was just naturally skilled.

The conversation and drinking continued for several hours, by which time the S.M.S. group had spilled out into the other areas of the bar. I had tried striking up a conversation with a shady character nursing a beer in the corner, but that turned out to be a dead end – I dropped enough subtle hints regarding my desire for information but this guy didn't pick up on any of them, instead complaining over and over about his wife.

There were considerably less people with us than when we started, and the groups slowly started to shrink and amalgamate until the red headed Meltran barged in next to me, interrupting a quiet conversation (well, more like a gentle interrogation) I was having with one of Luca's crew. I turned around to see two crew heading out the door and the remainder of their group coming to join ours, making it the only S.M.S. group left in the bar, which had now become comfortably full of civilians.

"So," she began without preamble, "you're the new Skull squadron pilot, yes? Shirou Emiya?"

Her voice had somehow managed to go downhill during the evening, turning from gravel to boulders. She was holding the remains of a jug of beer, and where her glass was was anyone's guess. Nene pulled up beside her, widening the circle of people somewhat and looking considerably more relaxed, presumably due to the alcohol.

I took a sip from my glass and nodded. "Yes, that's right. I believe-" was as far as I got before I got cut off by the red headed Meltran.

"I'm Ramaria Rerenia!" she exclaimed, the smile on her face threatening to split it in two. I flashed a grin back at her. She was so very _very_ sloshed and obviously enjoying it. If I were to guess, if she didn't rein it in soon she'd either end up on the floor or becoming the entertainment for the night. I could go either way on my caring for it – fifty years of experience had taught me that dealing with drunks very much depended on the person drinking. "I'm a pilot in Pixie squadron. And I'm drunk!" she continued, throwing her arms in the arm to emphasise her last statement, and nearly falling off her bar stool in the process.

"I can see that," I noted carefully, taking another sip of beer. I'd been keeping a steady pace most of the night and felt mostly in control of my faculties. At least Ramaria seemed to be a happy drunk. "How'd you manage to get to that state?"

"Dunno!" she told me cheerfully. At least, her expression implied cheer. Her voice didn't bear thinking about. "The guys kept buying me beer, so I kept drinking it. Dunno why they'd buy me beer though!" This was punctuated by her throwing back the remains of her jug and slamming it on the table. From behind her, the pink haired Meltran sidekick looked on with no hint of worry on her face. She looked considerably more in control than her squadmate, so I assumed she was far more moderate with her drinking. Nene reinforced her image as she gave me an apologetic look, presumably for her squadmate. I put a reassuring smile on my face, which caused Nene to break eye contact with me and take a sip out of her glass.

"You know why? It's because they're trying to get into your pants," I replied candidly. A couple of guilty looks appeared on the faces of some of the guys in the group.

"My pants?" she asked quizzically. "Nothing interesting in there." Judging by the reaction of some of the guys earlier, she was clearly unaware of the apparent treasure she was hiding down there. "See," she informed me, as her hand slid down to her belt buckle, "nothing down here at all!" and with that gravelly declaration, she flipped the first button of her fly. In hindsight, I should have seen something like that happening, and fortunately Nene had the presence of mind to grab the very drunken pilot from behind and restrain her from popping any more buttons, accompanied by a squeak of "Ramaria-nee! No!"

Unfortunately for us, this unbalanced Ramaria, who then proceeded to topple over. I considered moving out of the way, but threw away the idea as potentially raising a few questions I'd like to not have answer regarding my enhanced reflexes. Instead I sighed inwardly, made a quick show about panicking and tried to cushion the fall of the two micronized Meltrans to the best of my ability as I was bodily deposited on the floor for the second time this week.

As I was extricating myself from the tangle of bodies on the ground, a bouncer came along and asked the three of us politely to leave. The booming laughter of the remaining maintenance crew followed me and Nene out of the bar as we balanced a snoring (like a buzzsaw) Ramaria between us. While my night was prematurely cut short, I wasn't too worried. I'd managed to clear several more people off my list of potential interferences, which was a win in and of itself.

Even though the walk back to headquarters wasn't long, and despite the fact it was closing in on 2300 hours, we somehow found ourselves surrounded by advertising holos, probably ready to prey on drunk people. Every single one of them had an image of the Galactic Fairy on them, letting me unnecessarily know about just how few tickets were left for her tour. It wasn't that I didn't care about the singing – nearly every event that humanity had stumbled into over the past half century that had the ability to end us as a species seemed to be ended or caused by singing – but the cloyingly insistent nature of the ads was beginning to annoying me.

We'd just turned the last corner which should have given a clear view down the street towards headquarters, but instead ran almost headfirst into a freshly imaged holo.

"Damn it!" I swore. "Just go away already, I don't want to see your concert," I grumbled irritably, and waved away the holo.

"Do you not like like Sheryl Nome?" Asked Nene from the other side of Ramaria. I scratched my head with my hand, annoyed that I let mere holos overwhelm my patience. In my defence, I swear I hadn't seen any holos advertising anything else for the two weeks I'd been on Frontier.

"It's not that," I replied, "just getting a bit sick of seeing nothing but the same advertisements everywhere." Sensing perhaps the pink haired Pixie was looking to say something, I continued to speak. "Are you going to the concert tomorrow?"

After giggling her way through my annoyance at the holos, she replied. "Ah, no. I have tickets to a later concert; I'm going to Island-3 to visit my family tomorrow."

"That's nice," I replied non-committally as we dragged Ramaria through the doors of our headquarters and down towards the barracks.

Apparently the silence was getting to her, as she opened her mouth again. "Onee-sama said Mikhail and Luca are flying stunts for the opening concert. It's a school thing," she offered. I found myself curious on two counts – this was the first I'd heard about Mikhail and Luca flying stunts, and who was 'Onee-sama'?

"By Onee-sama do you mean..." I trailed off, directing a significant look at the snoring Meltran between us. Nene giggled and shook her head.

"No, Klan-onee-sama."

Another point of curiosity – why did Klan merit such a title as opposed to say 'sempai', a more traditional title for a working relationship? I voiced this question out loud and received another giggled response.

"Because Onee-sama is Onee-sama!"

I shook my head at the absurdness of the answer. Maybe she had a few more drinks than I originally thought. No time to probe further though, as we'd pulled up in front of a door that Nene quickly keyed open. I noted both of their names on the door as we walked through, and Nene helped me set Ramaria down on the bottom bunk. We waved our goodbyes and I headed out in the direction of my room, pausing at a vending machine to get a sports drinks to finish before I went to sleep.

* * *

With nothing to do the next day, I had wandered down to the barracks common area in order to watch the broadcast of Sheryl's concert. The common area was a medium sized split floor room. A large holo screen dominated one wall, and a bar was dominating another. Placed so to allow people to comfortably watch the holo screen was a large rectangular on the upper floor, and scattered around the lower floor were circular tables. Over the course of the day people had been filtering in, and by the time the concert was due to start there was a healthy dozen or so people in the room, including Ozma and Canaria (who by now I had discovered also doubled as the pilot for the our sole VB-6 Koenig Monster).

Suddenly the holo darkened and the chatter in the room dropped off in anticipation. Sure enough (having seen a few of her shows on holo in the past year), Sheryl managed to open the show with her usual attention grabbing flair, highlighting herself to the accompaniment of a whip crack . "Listen to my song!" she demanded, a mere fraction of a second before Mikhail and his stunt fliers roared down the aisle. The music built up as the EX-gear powered personal fliers reached the stage and burst upwards in a flash of light that illuminated Sheryl on the stage. It wasn't until the Mikhail and Luca's group had corkscrewed to the ceiling that that Sheryl burst into song, beginning with her first number 'Sagittarius - nine pm - don't be late'.

My attention was split between the singing (despite my general lack of knowledge on the topic of music, as far as I could tell, she was quite good) and the acrobatics. Although I couldn't pick Luca or Mikhail out of the group of fliers (Reinforcement of the eyes can only take you so far when limited by the resolution of broadcast. If I were at the live concert it would be a different matter), it wasn't often I knew of someone performing in such a high profile event. I thought it looked a little tame – I definitely knew Mikhail could have been a bit more daring, and Luca too. Just as that thought crossed my mind, I spotted a breakaway flier from the group cut towards the centre of the arena and work into a curved dive. As he did, another of support fliers lost his nerve a little and tried to wobble away, but only succeeded in edging himself into the other guy. My eyes narrowed a bit in concern as control surfaces collided, and sent the poor guy on the dive in a somewhat abortive spiral towards the pink haired songstress.

The camera angle caught the look on Sheryl's face beautifully – it was utter shock. The sound system conveyed a collective gasp from the audience that was echoed around the common room I was in. She stumbled backwards and off the edge of the stage, and the flier who had apparently gotten himself back under control rocketed down after her. I took a quick look around the room and saw nine sets of white knuckles and anxious faces – Ozma was too busy making a cup of coffee to care, and Canaria was looking on with her usual aplomb. Seconds later Sheryl was riding a pilot out from the back of the stage, singing at full volume as though nothing had happened. The speakers in the room emitted a large cheer from the live audience, which evidently caught Ozma by surprise – he swore a bit and turned to look at the holo, a wet jacket sleeve betraying the fact he'd managed to spill coffee over it.

The rest of the song passed without incident, and once Sheryl was safely deposited on stage she launched into her next song with a wink, a sultry grin and a holo suit change. The fliers apparently weren't part of the main entertainment for this number and were just breezing around, providing multiple camera angles for the broadcasters. At least I assumed that was what was occurring, considering whoever had the remote around here was flicking through multiple angles like no-one's business. As the holo flipped onto it's fifth angle, a picture of Ranka Lee appeared on screen before shuffling off again.

"Go back," I instructed to the room in general, and with a muffled click from somewhere behind me the holo switched back to the view of Ranka, causing Ozma to spit-take in his second coffee related incident within five minutes.

"Ranka?" he exclaimed incredulously. He told me he'd gotten tickets for Ranka to go to the show, so I guess he was just surprised to see her being singled out in the crowd. I wasn't as surprised – no doubt the producers were telling any and all cameramen to record any cute young girls enjoying themselves so as to boost their ratings. Canaria turned to Ozma with a sly look on her face but before she could deliver a jibe the light in the room came on and the holo cut broadcast. I leaned back in the chair, not caring one way or the other for the sudden cut in broadcast, but the everyone else in the room began to look around, confusion evident on some faces, curiosity on others.

Within seconds, Bobby (in what I've come to recognise as his serious tone) began to speak, and judging by the echoes coming from the hallway he was was on the shipwide P.A. system. "Request for the deployment of S.M.S. from the President's office. All fighter squadrons scramble. Mission code is Victor-3. Repeat, code Victor-3 has been issued."

That was met with a clattering of chairs as everyone stood up, confusion and curiosity wiped from every face, replaced with a sense of purpose. Code Victor-3 meant one thing, and one thing only. The Vajra had come to Frontier.

* * *

Ozma beat me to the hangar, having sent me on a quick errand to get in touch with Mikhail and Luca and get them back here asap. By the time I got there, the Squad Commander's VF-25S was kitted out with an Armoured FAST Pack, and my crew was finishing loading up my bird with a Tornado Pack. Robbs rushed across to the cockpit as I used my EX-gear to boost straight in and begin my abbreviated pre-flight. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mikhail and Luca's units being prepped.

"The Squad Commander told us to kit you up with the Tornado pack," Robbs outlined as he reached earshot of the cockpit. I nodded, distracted by my pre-flight. The Tornado FAST Pack increased the armament of my ride, by means of a rotatable beam cannon mount located behind the cockpit and additional micro-missile launchers on the wings. It was a good choice for heading into a firefight where we were expecting support, in this case by the entire defensive home fleet. My only other choice was the Super FAST Pack, which effectively dropped the beam cannon for additional engine ports, increasing vacuum manoeuvrability. "Also, we obviously don't have time to switch you back to the single seat cockpit, so you're stuck without slave mode on today's deployment," Robbs finished. I'd pretty much finished the abridged pre-flight, so I took the time to reply to that one.

"Thanks," I replied deadpan. "I couldn't tell with the empty seat behind me."

Robbs shot me an amused grin and backed away as the last of the modular pack slipped over the wings. The diagnostic lights came up all green on my HUD and the ground crew waved me an all clear. A small holo of the Squad Commander popped up in the bottom corner of my H.U.D. "Skull Four, are you clear to go?"

"Roger that Skull Leader," I replied as we taxied to the catapult lifts. The wheel clamps locked in and my view changed over the course of twenty seconds from the inside of the hangar to a marvellous view of the galaxy across the bow of the ARMD-L carrier. For a full second I enjoyed the view (the sight of white pinpricks on black from the vantage of vacuum is something that never fails to impress upon me the resilience of the human race, having lived through Space War I and never thinking we'd get here) and then with a slight shudder through the airframe, Ozma and myself left the carrier behind on plumes of nuclear fire. I matched course with the Squad Commander, counting down the distance before we would reach the tagged combat zone we'd received orders to reinforce.

"Trace on," I murmured, allowing odo to fill into four of my circuits. I diverted some out of one into my eyes, Reinforcing in order to improve my vision. Reinforcing like this in space used to mess with my head considerably – due to the vast distances between objects in space, I had to force my eyes to increase their imaging power, rather than focus on sharpness and contrast like I did when I was fighting on foot. It's like looking through a telescope with a one hundred and eighty degree field of view – extremely confusing. By now though, I'd been using the technique for so long that I had no problems filtering out unnecessary information, and at the limits of my sight I could make out a VF-171 Nightmare dogfighting with a smaller Vajra creature between the frontline and our fleet. Ten seconds later the optical cameras on my unit picked up what I was looking at, and tagged both the fighter and the Vajra on my HUD. The Squad Commander veered to intercept, and within ten seconds we'd obviously reached the range of his long range missiles. "Engaging," he reported in a short bark, and the two missiles on his wing hardpoints blazed a bright red trail across my heat sensors towards the dogfighting pair.

The N.U.N.S. pilot in the Nightmare didn't seem to be exceptionally bad or good, but his reluctance to transform eventually allowed the Vajra to force the Nightmare into a position where it could close in from behind. I watched impassionately as it did so, pulling in close and extending it's flagellum for a killing blow. It was at that point that Ozma's missiles caught up with the target, detonating it in a gaudy orange flower-burst of an explosion. The Nightmare rocketed ahead of the explosion and pulled into a level flight. The Squad Commander and I pulled alongside, transforming into GERWALK mode.

"S.M.S. Skull Squadron Commander Ozma Lee to N.U.N.S. military units. We'll take over this space," Ozma broadcast into the clear. A high pitched, shaken voice responded, presumably from the Nightmare he'd just saved. "U-Understood!" And with that, it pulled away. I looked forwards to the frontline, where it the N.U.N.S. forces showed no signs of disengaging. Outnumbered, if not out-gunned, I had no illusions that they may have missed Ozma's broadcast – they were fighting hard just to stay alive, let alone pull back. A surge of fury shot through my system, igniting my desire to protect and save people, an instinct that had it's seed planted by my adopted father and grew into what it was today through five decades of watching humanity almost being annihilated by both internal and external threats.

"Skull Four to Skull Leader: we've got some N.U.N.S. pilots to save," I told Ozma, fighting my anger back down. It would do my cover story no favours if he realised how concerned I was for the N.U.N.S. units, and I didn't want to lose the small amount of trust I had gained with him by shooting off in combat without orders.

"We do indeed," came the reply. "Skull Four: Break and engage at will."

"Roger that," I nodded with satisfaction and transforming back into fighter mode. Ozma and I rocketed towards the frontline, and through Reinforcement of the engine lines I ended up leading the charge. As I came into micro missile range, I tagged the three small Vajra that were the most threat to the two Nightmares still in the fight, set six missiles per target and opened fire from the Tornado Pack launchers, while simultaneously sending my targeting data to Ozma's bird so he wouldn't waste missiles on my target. Unfortunately, one of those drones managed to get a bead on one of the Nightmares, spewing what appeared to be cannon shells or some equivalent through the airframe of the unlucky pilot even as he attempted to pull away. One must have hit the magazine or a micro missile, as the entire Nightmare vaporised itself.

Mere seconds after that, my missiles struck, erasing the three of the creatures from the face of the galaxy.

Seconds after that, Ozma's first barrage struck, replacing two Vajra with bursts of chemical fire.

Almost as one, the remaining members of the swarm swung around, leaving the sole remaining Nightmare a chance to disengage. The pilot took it with extreme alacrity and brought himself around in a tight curve, shooting away at ninety degrees from the swarm that was heading towards us. With the element of surprise gone, so was our chance to for some easy take-downs. Ozma vectored off towards a lone straggler out wide, and the four other Vajra curved in after him in a perfect wingman play.

Their attempt to close in on him was easily foiled as I used my manoeuvring thrusters to line up the lead drone. I engaged the trigger on my gunpod, and a repetitive thudding sound transferred through the airframe, indicating the weapon was spitting out shells as it was supposed to. Well that, and the line of small bursts stitching across the midsection of the lead Vajra. It spasmed twice, then unmoving and silent continued on it's current course – it would continue floating like that forever. The three remaining chasers, sensing that I was a bigger threat to their safety, broke off their attack run on Ozma. One curved away from from me and I vectored in on a chase course, while the other two broke off, no doubt preparing to strike in on me once their friend made me go where they wanted me to be.

"I'm chasing their leader," Ozma broke in, a holo of him appearing quickly then disappearing from HUD in short order. "Roger," I acknowledged in reply, noting that his vector was taking him into an asteroid field. I found it amusing that between systems Frontier had somehow managed to find an asteroid field, but in hindsight they were good locations for resource gathering so they may have been actively sought after. I turned my attention back to the chase, where the Vajra I was following was shedding some kind of material. I rolled quickly away from the course of one of the dropped objects, which was apparently a damn good thing as it appeared to implode, then throw out a field effect of some sort which warped my vision. As I rocketed past the field effect, already correcting my course to dodge another two 'charges', I felt a slight resonance across my magic circuits, and then it was gone. As I slid between the next two charges I noticed the same resonance. Curious, but irrelevant at this point in time. Something to examine in depth when I wasn't in combat.

I fired my manoeuvring thrusters in such a way to throw my VF-25 into a spin and push me away from a line of charges the creature I was following had dropped. This was apparently the opportunity his friends were waiting for, as I was approached from my right by a drone, which opened fire with a burst from it's imitation cannon. I immediately transformed into battloid mode, reducing the profile of my unit visible to the creature. The Vajra fired burst passed by the chest of my bird, missing it by centimetres. I brought the legs of my unit up, threw them forwards and triggered a large burst from the thrusters, arresting some of my forward motion. The frame started to shudder in response to my violent and unorthodox manoeuvre, so I compensated by Reinforcing the hip joints of the battloid and the shuddering halted. The Vajra swinging in on me tried to correct it's aim, but by that time I had my gunpod up and firing, and I don't miss. The creature disappeared into a mist of fluid and flesh, blue fluid flash freezing now that it was out of the confines of whatever heating system the Vajra had.

I switched into GERWALK mode and used the Tornado Pack's rotating beam cannon mounted behind my head to put two large holes through the Vajra that thought it could sneak up on me. The Vajra I was initially chasing had swung around, no doubt expecting it's friends to have finished me off. Instead, the wide loop it was tracing allowed me to mark it up easily and with a dull thunk, eight missiles detached from their pods and split the space between my unit and the incoming Vajra. It tried to evade, but didn't have the momentum to do so, and this quick conflict ended with considerable overkill.

A red streak belted out of the asteroid belt at considerable speed, diving headfirst into the anti-fighter barrage the home fleet was pouring out. Seconds later, a unit tagged as Skull Leader emerged from the same asteroid field on a pillar of blue flame, chasing the target.

"Shirou!" Ozma roared in frustration across the voice comm. "Get after it, I can't catch it!"

In response, I brought the Messiah around in a tight arc using the GERWALK's main thrusters and switched back into fighter mode, trying to pull into an intercepting vector with the target. Ozma was clearly lagging behind, not for want of trying – he must have been caught out of mode when the target had made a break for it. As much as I was in a better position to chase my HUD was putting the point of interception about forty kilometres _behind_ Island-One.

The red Vajra rolled from side to side, evading the anti fighter barrage the fleet was throwing at it with seemingly contemptuous ease. Several of the smaller yellow drones began to pull into escort for the larger creature as it plunged into the heart of the fleet. Several weren't as skilled (or lucky) as their leader – in their attempt to link up I counted at least two of the smaller insectoids disappear in a blizzard of cannon fire. As I reached the killzone, targeting data from the battleships fed into the HUD of the Messiah, allowing me to pick a path through the murderous barrage.

I watched on with fascination as the large rod on the larger creature's back swivelled over it's shoulder on some kind of ball and joint mount. Yellow electricity began to form around the shaft, building in intensity until it was almost too much to look at. With a seemingly careless flick of it's wings, the large creature described a lazy barrel roll to the left and discharged the energy collected in the rod. A golden ball split the vacuum for a scant second, following a path right through the engine of a frigate that my HUD had tagged as the _Delphinious_ for a second before it disappeared in a violent triple explosion.

Mere seconds later I noticed another ship in the defensive line go up in flames. Through narrowed eyes I traced the source of the second explosion to another red Vajra, moving in to link up with the one I was chasing. I grimaced as both the large Vajra and their escorts sped through the debris field of the two frigates. We were having enough trouble dealing with one of the large-types as it is – two was definitely going to be pushing it with the two of us. At that point in time however, some good news broke our way.

"Skull Leader, this is Skull Two. Skull Three and myself are ready for deployment," Mikhail's voice came through on the comms, curiously devoid of his usual lilt that suggested he was always finding the conversation personally hilarious. I rocketed through the expanding debris in chase, keeping the target distance marker on the HUD in the corner of my concentration – I was reaching extreme weapons range, and didn't want to give the Vajra a chance to get inside Island-One.

"Skull Three; deploy behind the Frontier defensive line immediately. Skull Two; hold position for thirty seconds pending enemy movement," came Ozma's instant reply. I nodded to myself. Luca would provide the most information out in space, and until we determined whether or not the Vajra would penetrate Island-One, there wasn't a lot of point in deploying Mikhail. "Skull Four; we're going to protect the city," Ozma finished up with, and I gave my acknowledgement to him with a curt "roger."

The pair of large-type Vajra and their escorts rounded the raised protective shell of Island-One, and I rolled my eyes despite myself. By failing to have lowered that shell already, the N.U.N.S. had denied the citizens a considerable amount of extra protection and, as had been proven just now, given our enemies a mask to cover their movements. Although I was out of sight for barely more than five seconds, one of the red Vajra had disappeared by the time I had rounded the curvature of the shell.

The other was charging it's anti-ship weapon and making a beeline straight towards the pressurised bubble that composed Island-One's inner shell.

It's weapon was still charging as I came into weapons range, and as the fire indicators came up on my HUD I opened up with a small burst from my gunpod. At the extreme range it seemed unlikely to make a hit, but I felt justified in taking the shots as anything that threw off it's concentration for a second would buy me more time to maybe keep it out of Island-One and save dozens, if not hundreds, of lives. The only Vajra response to my gunfire involved one of the smaller escort insectoids rolling into my line of fire and taking the hits for the larger creature before continuing on it's vector as a mass of pulped flesh and fluid.

In the time that had transpired, the larger Vajra had loosed it's anti-ship weaponry on the inner shell, vaporising an area the size of a baseball field in the bubble and spreading spiderweb cracks through a much larger area. The Vajra cut straight for the gap, and with my velocity already stupendously high, I decided against pushing the engines harder – I'd need every advantage I could get to slow down to atmospheric combat speeds without ploughing into the artificial ground once I was inside.

Sure enough, the self-repair gel that compromised Island-One's vacuum breach rapid response protocols began spreading along the damage, sealing the spiderwebbing almost instantaneously. The gel was having trouble covering the larger hole however, and without an apparent second thought the large Vajra and it's four remaining escorts dived through the gap.

Ozma, apparently watching the whole thing from somewhere behind me, swore loudly. "Michel, deploy in Island-One. Shirou, follow them in. I'm going to have to redeploy." I tilted my head slightly to look at the tracking display, noting Ozma breaking off and heading for the dock where the Quarter was. I turned my head back towards Island-One in time to see the self-repair gel consolidate it's hold on the outer edge of the breach and begin to really increase the rate of closure of the hole. "Damn it," I muttered to no-one in particular. I fed odo from an open circuit into my eyes, increasing my ability to judge the gel's rate of repair and comparing it to what I knew of my Messiah's frame dimensions. It confirmed my initial take on the now rapidly closing gap – that I currently wasn't going to make it. Still speeding towards the gap, I thumbed my FAST Pack release button, ejecting the spent Tornado Pack micro missile racks and beam cannon. This in turn allowed me to sweep the variable wings back, minimising my profile as I burst through the gap with what I judged to be a comfortable three centimetres to spare on either side.

The abrupt change from vacuum to dense atmosphere buffeted the VF around like a yacht caught in a storm. I was vaguely reminded of being thrown about in a similar fashion by Archer when he intervened in our first fight with Berserker, except this time there wasn't the roaring heat and sound I had associated with _that_ event. Apparently caught in an area of atmosphere where the forwards rushing wind towards the now closed breach was clashing with the rebound off the intact shell, seemingly random pressure changes were throwing the craft around and simply making the atmospheric avionics completely useless. In response I fired the manoeuvring thrusters in an attempt to pull level, but my ability to do so was mostly dependent upon clearing the turbulence. As I began to level out and gain control of the Messiah, I threw the airbrakes on hard, extended the flaps to maximum and swept the wings out again. The frame shuddered and groaned in protest, and I pushed odo through my circuits into the craft, performing a Structural Grasp limited to examining the servos and joints along the avionics. Satisfied that everything would hold, I made a sweeping bank to bleed off more speed. A sensor chirped a warning regarding the heat permeating the airframe, but that quickly died as I completed the turn.

Below me I could see the large Vajra had already gotten down to business, a large smoking crater describing the remains of what I could only assume to see some sort of N.U.N.S. defensive forces. The smaller escorts had broken away for whatever reason, spreading out over the city. I decided to concentrate on the larger Vajra in the hopes of blunting it's apparent greater combat potential. Currently it was upright on two feet, extending an arm in the air and expelling imitation cannon fire through something grafted on it's arm. Again, I Reinforced my eyes to increase sharpness and contrast, quickly following the creature's line of fire to determine what it was firing at.

It was firing at a civilian pulling acrobatics in an EX-gear!

How on earth it had determined that a civilian flier in an EX-gear was any sort of threat was beyond me, but whoever was in the EX-gear was doing a fairly good job of staying out the line of fire. As I reached missile range, I expended my remaining two hardpoint mounted missiles on the tagged creature and followed them in. The Vajra creature, facing the other way, barely reacted. Instead it elected to continue firing at the flier and was rewarded by scoring a hit which broke off one of the control surfaces, causing the flier to spiral downwards. My missiles shrouded the giant creature in fire and smoke and as I passed overhead I took advantage of the cover to transform into GERWALK mode, dropping down to the street. I used the thrusters on the GERWALK's feet to twist as I dropped, my forwards momentum carrying me away from the creature as I turned to face it, gunpod in the right manipulator hand.

I pushed the thrusters and braced myself as the Messiah bled speed, in the process damaging store fronts and housing along the side of the street I was currently sliding along. The smoke from the missile strike began to clear and the red creature burst forth with a fury reminiscent of Berserker - a single bound allowing it to throw itself through the air towards me. It's arm was outstretched, telegraphing a huge swipe.

As it started the leap, my HUD's tagging system identified two civilian contacts behind me and threw them up on holo. In the single image was the civilian flier attempting to help up a cowering, green haired girl in a _very _familiar yellow sun dress.

My personal sense of justice aside, the Squad Commander would murder me (or at least attempt to) if I let his sister perish in my thruster wake.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to prepare a defence that would _definitely_ allow me to hide my abilities as a magus. As a result I quickly came up with the only plan I could think of in the fraction of a second I was allowed that offered any chance of us surviving. The only unknown factor in it being the amount of strength the Vajra could bring to bear on it's initial attack. I began flooding my odo into the left manipulator arm, Reinforcing it, strengthening it, hardening it for what was to come. At the same time I opened three more of my magic circuits, giving myself the extra reserve of odo I would need in a few seconds. Managing my odo on this level while trying to manage a craft as complex as a variable fighter was definitely taxing on my concentration – one slip and I could pour too much odo into the arm I was preparing as my defence, shattering it. Likewise, one slip on the piloting side and I could end up being blown right over Ranka and the flier, ending their lives prematurely. A bead of sweat trickled down my temple, and rolled past my ear.

With a shuddering sound of reverberating metal the creature was upon me, it's swiping claws meeting the defensively raised left forearm of the Messiah. The metal in the arm held firmly under the force imparted to it. The same could not be said for the hydraulic servos holding the arm in place, and it bent from the elbow join straight towards the cockpit. I fought the controls to slow the impact as much as possible, and gave a large burst on the thrusters to slow our combined momentum towards Ranka Lee and the flier.

Even as I did that, I opened a part of my soul that was usually closed to the world and reached deep inside. From that desolate wasteland of fire and swords that I call my soul I reverently took a rainbow shelled barrier of light. Taking that image with me I retracted from my soul, feeling the odo drain from my recently circuits as I began to bring that image into reality, Tracing it over whatever the World of Frontier had in place, displacing the pure matter of the world to impose my will upon it.

By now I was within fifty metres of Ranka and her EX-gear clad guardian, who by now seemed resigned to their fates and was using his remaining control surface in a futile attempt to shield the both of them. Concentrating on the formation of their salvation as I was, I only absently felt the forearm of the Messiah get forced back onto the fuselage between the nose-cone and the cockpit. The metal of the fuselage crumpled somewhat, folding the left hand side of the cockpit over my left leg and completely cutting off all movement of the limb. I felt a distant pain along that leg, indicating that at least somewhere the metal had folded onto my leg enough to at least break skin. A millisecond later, the folding metal bent along the edge of the cockpit, closing along the arm of my EX-gear. With no concentration to spare I could do nothing for it, and a dull pain echoed along my arm along to match a muted snapping sound echoing through the cockpit.

The pain was muted because my concentration was elsewhere. With thirty metres until we washed over Ranka and the civilian flier and our combined velocity dropping quickly enough that I now knew we'd stop a few metres before the civilian pair, I knew it was now was the time.

"Rho Aias!" I roared, completing the Tracing and bringing a perfect copy of the legendary shield of the Greek hero Ajax into the world.

One of the most useful tricks I'd learnt in the cockpit was how to complete a Tracing and project the object away from my body, with varying velocities. Mostly, this served to provide extra offence where the situation demanded it. This time however, it was used to project Rho Aias behind the thruster ports I was using to slow us down. Rho Aias was a multi layered defensive Phantasm designed to ward all projectile attacks. By increasing the odo slightly into the Tracing, I was able to widen it enough to comfortably encompass the two people behind me, and as I powered to a stop just in front of the pair, the Phantasm easily deflected the thruster wash away from them.

Sure, they'd still be a little singed from the wash rushing around them, but it was a damn sight better than being dead.

Now deprived of control of the left hand side of my body, I used my right arm to bring the gunpod around and brought it straight up into the face of the Vajra. The creature, perhaps sensing an obvious threat when it saw one, disengaged by leaping backwards. I wasted no time in cutting the power to the thrusters and halting the flow of odo to Rho Aias – the quicker the Trace left this world, the easier it would be to convince those two that they were saved by some damn good luck rather than a second rate magus.

"Hey kid," I roared over the external speakers, "Grab the girl and get up here!" I disengaged the cockpit locks and threw the hatch open with my good hand. Concentration waning, I engaged the automatic point barrier system rather than waste my waning odo on reinforcing the entire airframe. Out of the corner of my eye I watched on my HUD as the pilot behind me gathered Ranka quickly into his arms, engaged the flight unit on his EX-gear and flew around the left side of the unit. It was imperative I got a second pilot in the VF-25 as soon as possible – my cockpit was ruined and only retained working movement controls for the right arm. Hopefully the training seat behind me was relatively undamaged.

The rest of my concentration was on the Vajra in front of me, which by now had landed (kicking up a large amount of dust in the process) and raised it's underarm cannon in our direction. The aiming was hasty however, and all but one on the shells whistled past harmlessly. The remaining shell detonated on the point barrier, but that was enough to disturb the flier. I watched, disgruntled, as he dropped Ranka. She managed to make a stumbling landing, and the pilot had the good grace to look torn as to whether he should continue up to the cockpit or turn back for Ranka. I made that choice for him.

"You can fly right? Get in here!" I roared over the speakers again. "We can pick up Ranka when we drive it off!"

The flier continued his flight up through the hail of shells. The Vajra was correcting it's aim, and I knew unless we could get another pilot in my second seat to take control, I would have to do something I would regret in order to save their lives. Something that would definitely mark me to all people who may be watching as not just a normal human.

Before a critical mass of shells landed on the VF-25 and tore through the pinpoint barrier, a clunk followed by a whirring sound indicated the flier had landed behind me and interfaced his EX-gear with the cockpit behind me.

"Kid," I began, now using the inter cockpit comm link and wasting no time. "You reckon you can fly this bird? My cockpit is ruined."

An agonising second passed as the kid scanned the controls and settled himself in. "I can do this," the young pilot behind me stated, a thread of steel holding his wavering voice together. I nodded, and used my good hand to transfer all flight control to the rear cockpit.

"You have control," I stated. "Suppress it with the gunpod," I commanded, hoping the Vajra would hunker down if we threw enough firepower it's way. Hunker down long enough to grab Ranka, at least.

"I have control," he acknowledged, and without even waiting for targeting data, pulled the trigger with a mighty roar.

There is a world of difference between firing a Howard GU-17A 58mm Gatling gunpod in the vacuum of space and firing one in an atmosphere with the cockpit frame open. For a fraction of a second there was a whirling sound as the gunpod spun up. Then, what would usually be a dull repetitive thumping transmitted via the airframe becomes much louder. Finally, the major point of difference is the rip-roar of shells as they break the local speed of sound about a metre and a half from your head. Repeat for about thirty-five rounds per second and it's a hell of a noise.

The effect downrange was hard to deny though. Although a large number of rounds were spread off target, enough were getting close to force the creature to throw it's hands up defensively and stop shooting at us, even force it to take a step back. There was just one _tiny_ problem.

"Hey kid," I threw over my shoulder nonchalantly, although I doubted he could hear over the sound of the gunpod screaming beside us, even if I was yelling down his ear. "You're about to run out of-"

*****Click*****

"Ammo," I finished after a second, breaking the deafening quiet.

* * *

Author's notes:

_Well, sorry about the delay, but I spent two of the last three weekends away from my house, and seeing as that's when I get the majority of the writing done there wasn't much that could be done there. _

_For people wondering when I'll expand on Shirou's character and motivation to be on Frontier anyway, relax. Seeing as everything is from Shirou's point of view, and there are a fair few episodes in Macross Frontier that concentrate on what Alto gets up to in-between fighting off Vajra, that gives me a lot of spare time that Shirou must be doing something else :)_

_On the topic of Alto, can't wait to write him in – he's definitely one of the deeper and evolving characters in recent anime, so here's hoping I don't struggle too hard to do him justice. I'm kind of worried I won't be able to, but there's only one way to see if that'll turn out. _

_The last thing I want to touch upon is how hard it is to incorporate thaumaturgical combat in with fighter-based combat. My grounding is in physics, so I think I tend to lean towards relying on the capabilities and limits of the fighter rather than stretching them with Shirou's abilities. Thoughts?_

_Anyway, take it easy, and hopefully I'll have something new up soonish!_


	3. Long Ride

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

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Chapter 3: Long Ride

* * *

"Out of ammo?" The kid behind me yelped in surprise. Down the street, the Vajra began to recover, stepping forward and bringing up it's cannon arm again.

"Yeah," I replied matter-of-factly over the voice comm. "The ammo counter is in the bottom right of your HUD." I wasn't overly worried – while the kid was busy depleting our ammunition stores at a prodigious rate, I had noticed Ozma and Mikhail close in on our position. Ozma especially was closing in fast, and with a tortured crack of snapping asphalt he dropped down in battloid mode right in front of the red Vajra, kicking up a thin cloud of dust. The creature recoiled slightly, then leaned forwards, but Ozma had the initiative and seized it's arms and began forcing it back.

"Shirou!" The Squad Commander's voice burst through the comm, a holo opening up on my HUD to accompany it. "Get Ranka out of here! And if you put a dent in her I'll jam a reaction warhead up your arse and detonate it!" Well that explained why the Squad Commander had thrown himself into the melee this quickly – he'd obviously spotted Ranka near our position. And his timely intervention provided us with the time and space me and my new friend would need to extricate ourselves from this mess.

"You heard the Squad Commander kid, pick her up," I said across the cockpit. Behind me, the kid responded with a startled "O-Okay!" As the kid began to move the manipulator arm towards Ranka, who was hiding somewhere ineffectually behind a fire hydrant (having said that, it appeared to be the only remaining bit of cover in the street that wasn't debris), and yelled out the still open cockpit towards her. "Hey Ranka! It's Shirou Emiya. Remember me?"

The green haired girl nodded, wide eyed, in reply. That was a start – it'd be easier to get her to co-operate if she knew who was trying to scoop her up in an overly large metal hand. "Okay," I continued in a neutral voice (no point scaring her further, she already looked at wits end) "I'm disabled at the moment, but my friend behind me will pick you up and then we'll take you to a safe place. Understand?" I had made careful not to mention that these were Ozma's orders, given the nature of the conversation I'd had with him earlier in the week. I could only hope the man himself could stay safe enough to not blow his cover when this was over.

Again a nod. The hand completed it's descent and Ranka clambered into it, making it considerably easier for the kid behind me to close it up safely. Fine finger manipulation on the battloid hand was always a tricky thing, and any slightest slip could end up pasting Ranka all over the floor. The kid went slowly and methodically however, and locked the finger joints when Ranka was tightly held, but not overly constricting.

Up ahead, it appeared that the Vajra's larger mass had allowed it to break free from the Squad Commander's grip. Again, it stepped backwards, levelling it's wrist mounted imitation cannon at the armoured battloid's head unit. Without pausing for a heartbeat, Ozma switched forms to the lower profile GERWALK, sending rounds screaming over his head, and unluckily for us, straight towards us. The kid quickly dropped the useless gunpod in the Messiah's right arm, sending it rolling into a row of shattered store fronts, and then brought it up and around to shield Ranka. The red creature barely had time to fire off more than ten rounds before Ozma had powered up his thrusters and rammed his VF into the Vajra's midsection, predictably sending it staggering. By the time it had recovered, Ozma had already completed a shift back into battloid mode and widened his stance, standing square on with the creature in some form of twisted stand-off.

Then, on trails of smoke and fire, micro-missiles began to make their way from Ozma's Messiah, each one describing a separate path down the street detonating on and around the stunned Vajra. The explosions and debris covered the creature from our field of view, and vise-versa. Now was our chance.

"I'm dropping a location on your HUD," I said over my shoulder. "Get there and we should be safe." Not that it would matter for me though – as soon as these two were on the Quarter, I'd be back out again once Robbs and his crew could extricate me from this destroyed cockpit and put me in the one the kid behind me was currently sitting in. "Roger," he replied, his voice having lost the wobble of tension that could have been used to describe it earlier. It would be fairly easy to attribute that to the fact we were no longer in the line of fire, but still, I mused to myself, this guy seemed to have gotten himself under control a lot quicker than I anticipated.

A sharp surge of pain shot up my left arm as the pilot behind me turned the Messiah towards the tag I'd placed on his HUD, reminding me it was broken. It was something I'd have to take care of after we were finished here – I had two methods available to me, but using any of them currently was pointless, seeing as my arm was forcibly being held in a broken state by the shape of the damaged cockpit. Likewise it would have to be done almost as soon as possible, before I ended up in Canaria's infirmary – if she set my arm to heal naturally I'd be off piloting duty for months to maintain my cover.

I set myself to ignoring the pain – we still weren't out of trouble yet. Using my good arm I triggered the canopy closure of the cockpit while we glided around on the GERWALK's leg thrusters. With a dull thunk, the canopy closed around us.

"Hey kid," I began, "now that we've got two seconds to spare, do you have a name?"

"Saotome Alto," he said. His tone rose incredulously towards the end of his sentence, which was punctuated by a muted thump as one of the smaller Vajra creatures alighted on the tarmac ahead of us, flagellum raised. "There's more of them?" Saotome groused, getting his voice back under control. I had to give the boy credit though – before he'd even finished his sentence he was pulling away down another street, pushing the thrusters as hard as I would've in his situation, but without my years of experience in variable fighters to back it up.

"Keep going Saotome," I urged him, "but be careful, the radar is picking up another two bogeys coming into formation." As if to punctuate my point, three bursts of imitation cannon fire whistled by our swaying variable fighter, tearing chucks of tar out of the road and opening gaping holes in the buildings surrounding us. I left Saotome alone as he sped along the street, instead opting to take scope of the tactical situation. My scopes were showing Ozma still engaged in street fighting with the larger Vajra we left behind, and therefore not of any immediate help. I winced as pain shot up my arm; Alto had just used the manoeuvring thrusters to throw the GERWALK mode Messiah to the left, evading a line of fire stitching up the street. He continued to the left, riding up a line of buildings as the line of cannon fire followed. In what I considered to be a pretty nifty move for a beginner, he punched his right booster hard, forcing thruster wake through a roof and throwing us over to the left in an arcing flip. We finished the arc by riding down some buildings on the other side of the street, the thruster wake melting glass and scorching concrete.

"Mikhail," I broadcast over the comm, "have you set up shop yet?" Probably our only chance of shaking the three Vajra on our tail was to forcibly remove them, and we were personally too short on weapons to actually do something about that.

"Give me a second, I'm setting up to cover along Stationfront Way. Can you get down there?" I nodded subconsciously before realising he would be too busy paying attention to the Vajra and responding verbally. I fed a minute amount of odo into my eyes in order to pick out street signs as I still hadn't gotten a complete grasp of the layout of Island-One yet.

"Mikhail?" Exclaimed Saotome in surprise from the seat behind me. In turn this elicited a somewhat predictable response from Skull-Two; "Alto?" It was then that I twigged – the kid behind me was wearing the same EX-gear as I had observed on the stunt fliers earlier in the day on Sheryl's stage before things went all pear shaped, which meant he and Mikhail went to the same school.

"Alright guys, there'll be plenty of time for a tearful reunion later," I snidely reminded them over over the comm. Saotome sputtered something indignant behind me and jerked the VF-25 into a leftwards slide, evading a burst of imitation cannon fire. I spotted a street sign five blocks ahead indicating Stationfront Way running perpendicular to the street we were travelling down. I quickly checked my scopes to confirm Mikhail's position before flipping to the internal comm. "Saotome, head right down Stationfront Way," I told the kid. He roared in response, using an extended burst on the main feet thrusters to launch the variable fighter above a car that had just pulled onto the road in front of us. I winced as imitation cannon fire found the car and ignited it in a ball of fire, but there was nothing I could do and anyone stupid enough to be out here instead of in the shelters should have known the risks.

Alto continued to pull the variable fighter into the air, rising above the explosion and pulling us out of the cover of the street. Imitation cannon fire shot past the Messiah as the smaller creatures tried to adjust their aim. They barely had a chance to. As soon as their fire began tracing within five metres of us, Saotome cut some of the thruster power and used the avionics to cut into a descending bank to our right. The cannon fire blew over our head as Saotome pulled into Stationfront Way, dropping into the cover below the rooftops. The respite was temporary – the three small Vajra quickly pulled in behind us and began spewing shells at us.

Saotome was constantly surprising me with his manoeuvres – they were rough, but he definitely had the ability to somehow keep out of the line of fire. By luck or by skill (probably natural skill – our luck would have run out quite a while ago if he'd just gotten lucky once), he was keeping the three of us in one piece.

Suddenly, targeting data from Mikhail's unit fed into my HUD, letting me know he had a shot lined lined up. A fraction of a second later as Saotome pushed the GERWALK past a burnt out car, a flash of light split the air, connecting a battloid silhouette on a roof several blocks to our left to the lead chasing Vajra, which by now had closed in to within striking distance of it's close combat flagellum.

As I was observing the creature using a rear mounted camera on the HUD, I got a clear view on the effect of the shot. And _damn_. The momentum imparted by Mikhail's shot instantly changed the direction of the Vajra's velocity, shifting it from a stable straight and level flight behind us into a asphalt faceplant in a fraction of a second. The body ploughed straight into the tarmac, pulping itself along the street before the remaining carapace (at least, that's what I assumed it's seemingly sturdy armour was) burrowed into an undamaged house, collapsing it in a shower of debris.

Before Saotome could yelp in surprise (and he did), a second shot from Mikhail collected another of our pursuers. For whatever reason, this one went up in a small explosion – perhaps Mikhail had penetrated whatever gland or organ that stores it's imitation cannon shells. I made a mental note to try and figure out the weak points in their biology from the recordings of this battle – the more ammunition I could save in any given fight would allow me to continue fighting longer without reload and resupply, something that would definitely be useful in the future.

I waited for the third shot, but apparently something was blocking Mikhail's view, as it never eventuated. In front of us a tall office block was rapidly approaching – apparently the station this road was named for was at the other end of the street. With the imitation cannon fire ceasing for the moment as the sole remaining Vajra moved into the cover below the rooftops, Saotome apparently realised just how fast he was closing in on the building. With an incoherent roar he diverted power into the manoeuvring thrusters and brought the feet thrusters forward to bleed off speed. Instead of looping off the face of the building like I expected however, the kid powered straight up along the face, shattering windows with our thruster wake and sending a shuddering pain through my broken arm.

This was less than ideal for one main reason - it was removing us from the relative cover of the buildings, throwing us out in the open. This would make it far easier for our pursuer to land a shell on us and also make it a damn sight easier for the larger Vajra to find us if it managed to break free of Ozma. Still, it would be worse for us right now if I brought the point up and made him second guess himself, so I kept quiet.

As we climbed the building, a burst of static heralded Ozma on the comm. "Skull Two, get over here. I need some support!"

I rolled my eyes. That made things a _lot_ better. The only advantage we had, of bringing the Vajra in the open to give Mikhail a clear shot, was now gone. We cleared the roof of the building and kept going upwards, making a beeline for the inner shell protecting Island-One. Behind us, the Vajra drone burst _through_ the roof of the building we were climbing, indicating it wasn't as good on the brakes as a Messiah was in the atmosphere if it couldn't pull up before using structural supports as airbrakes. As I was coming to expect from these smaller creatures, it opened fire before it really had us lined up and sprayed fire wide, using it's tracers to adjust the line of fire. As the line of fire closed in on us, I split some of my attention from monitoring just how close the inner shell was becoming to the rear camera that was tracking the small Vajra creature behind us.

It's mouth was glowing yellow, in a similar fashion to the large Vajra's anti-ship weapon before discharge. I opened my mouth to warn Saotome, but the kid was already throwing the GERWALK into a right side slip away from the line of shells closing in on us. A fraction of a second later a glowing yellow ball shot past us and Saotome lost avionics as the effects of the weapon played havoc with the local air pressure. That was the least of our problems, however. The shot impacted on the inner shell, lighting it up in a bright orange explosion. The dust cleared quickly, sucked out by a brand new hole in the shell.

Unfortunately, the dust wasn't the only thing being dragged along by the moving air – we were caught up in the flow and tumbling towards the hole the smaller Vajra opened in the inner bubble. As Saotome was just beginning to bring the swaying variable fighter under control, the imitation cannon fire swept us from behind. I counted four impacts impacts along the frame. The first was out along the far tip of the right wing and deflected harmlessly by the automatic pinpoint barrier. The second round ripped right through the elbow joint of the right manipulator arm while the barrier was trying to shift.

It was then I knew that no matter what else happened, we were _utterly_ screwed. The impacts of the remaining two rounds on the airframe were insignificant compared to the fact the Ranka was now floating, free of the Messiah, in the jetstream towards the hole.

"You have got to catch her Saotome!" I roared at him, simultaneously punching the canopy eject with my good hand. It tore away on detonating bolts and let in the roaring wind as Saotome finally brought the GERWALK under control. The Vajra had broken off the chase, possibly worried about being caught in the same jetstream we were currently riding. I felt the pedals in my EX-gear move in sympathy with Saotome's as he adjusted the angles of the feet thrusters and with a loud incoherent yell pushed as much available power to the thrusters.

We rocketed after Ranka, who was screaming in fear as she tumbled through the jetstream. She caught a glimpse of us chasing her and somehow, instinctually, managed to throw her limbs out to control her freefall. Saotome responded in kind, bringing the Messiah closer to the green haired girl. I stretched my hand out as we closed, and saw Ranka do the same, dress flapping wildly in the wind. Still, there was at least a two metre separation between us that just wasn't closing. "Bring us closer," I yelled over the roar of the jetstream, well aware that we were almost out the gaping hole that was the cause of our current predicament.

There was only going to be one shot at this. Saotome twisted the rudder and sent us into a slow slide across the path Ranka was holding. We edged closer, and I stretched as far as my crushed cockpit would allow me to. Closer. Closer. By now our hand were literally centimetres apart. I pulled odo from my open circuits and pulled the image of a shinai from my soul in my mind. There was no turning back now – I _had_ to save this girl, regardless of the fact it would give away my status as a magus. The shinai itself was a traditional weapon used in kendo, a wooden sword formed by lashing bamboo together. This particular shinai had no magical properties – it was merely a replica of one I had spotted at Fuji-nee's dojo before Space War One.

The shinai would easily reach the distance between us and hopefully allow me to pull Ranka in if she had the presence of mind to grab the other end of the thing when I Traced it into my hands. At the last moment however, the change in local airflow brought on by the Messiah imposing in on Ranka's steady fall pushed her falling body away from us, and any hope of bringing her in. I let the image in my head fall, unfulfilled, back to my soul. Ranka fell further away and slid into the hole (that was now rapidly repairing itself) out into the vacuum, carried along by the escaping atmosphere.

Well, what I thought was our last chance was apparently not. Saotome roared incoherently behind me (I briefly wondered if he knew how to articulate his words or keep quiet in a stressful situation _at all, _considering everything he seemed to do while piloting was punctuated with his loud voice) and dialled even more power into the thrusters. As we reached the hole we spotted Ranka with her eyes closed and mouth shut, drifting away along the edge of the atmosphere.

"Stay like that!" he yelled. Whether or not his voice carried that distance in the diminishing atmosphere was debatable, but regardless the green haired girl maintained her pose as I felt the EX-gear behind me detach from the Messiah and watched as Saotome pass overhead on a plume of blue thruster wash.

With Saotome not providing any station keeping input to the GERWALK, the variable fighter began to tilt and tumble out into space, leaving me to correct it's vector with one leg and one arm. I pushed power into the Messiah's right leg thruster and ended up using the right leg control to set the VF-25 into a slow, controlled turn – it was the best I could seeing as my access to the manoeuvring thrusters had been cut off.

It was then, through the diminishing atmosphere, I faintly heard the mechanical winch attached to Saotome's anchor line wind into action. Two seconds later, with a thump I felt through the frame, (we were beyond the edge of the escaping atmosphere now – I really hoped Ranka was still fine) Saotome docked with the cockpit. I hit the leg thrusters harder, turning us fully around as the Saotome's EX-gear finished mating with the cockpit controls.

"Saotome, it's all yours," I informed him through the comm in my helmet. He wasted no time, punching the thrusters and pushing towards the rapidly closing hole. The kid behind me was no doubt concentrating on getting through the gap in the inner shell before it shut (something which I judged we would make comfortably, despite the fact the healing speed of the self-repair gel was increasing rapidly), but I had spotted another threat. Below the hole, and heading towards us was the smaller Vajra creature that had broken off earlier. As the torrential winds died down, it probably felt safe chasing us now and was heading up to meet us.

We burst through the hole, struggling against the headwinds. It sealed closed behind us, but thankfully by that time we were out of the region where the incident air was combining with the wind bouncing off the inner shell, and we remained on a somewhat steady flight. Too steady. Saotome must have turned to look at the closed hole or something, because he failed in any way shape or form to evade the Vajra which was now closing in on us rapidly from straight in front.

I guess that despite his natural piloting ability, he still had a lot to learn about being in a battle.

A quick glance at my scopes confirmed that Mikhail was still working with Ozma to bring the larger red Vajra down, leaving us by ourselves. Without weapons or backup we were effectively helpless, doubly so seeing as Saotome was busy _not_ spotting the threat. I opened up my remaining circuits as wide as they could go and began to pull a torrent of odo from them. I had a plan to remove us from this undesirable situation, and it required the reproduction of one of the earliest swords I had catalogued in my soul – and incidentally one of the most powerful.

I opened my soul to my mind and dove down past layers of blades spiralling outwards in a concentric circle. My mind stopped next to a weapon so impossibly large that calling it a sword was almost a flat out lie – in front of my mind lay, blade first in a wasteland of fire, an oversized chuck of greying rock with a rough blade hewn along one side, and a rough handle cut down the other end. I burned the image into my mind and retreated from that barren wasteland.

"I am the bone of the sword," I uttered. I typically used the first line of my sole incantation as a focus when Tracing the most powerful weapons in my arsenal; I had never figured out why that seemingly made it easier for me to perform, but that was irrelevant at this point in time. I drew deeply on my remaining circuits, reconstructing the weapon from it's original materials, imposing it's accrued age and synchronising it with the experiences of the actual blade, which as far as I knew lay underneath the vaporised remains of the Eizbern mansion.

A high pitched scream behind me indicated that at least Ranka had spotted the incoming Vajra. This was followed a second later by a surprised curse from Alto, who had apparently _finally_ figured out the kind of trouble we were in.

"Matching with current velocity," I breathed quietly, preparing to bring the Tracing in to reality. I Reinforced my eyes to aid in divining what velocity I should launch the weapon with in order to create a collision course with the small Vajra creature. "Projection relative current location plus five metres relative 'up'," I continued under my breath. I felt the pull of artificial gravity in my stomach as Alto tried to pull away from the incoming Vajra.

"Stop that," I demanded in a tone of command; any unnecessary movements could throw off my aim and we were too close to get away now. "Initial velocity is six times relative, five point seven three degrees off longitudinal normal" I finished, finding the course I wanted. With that, I forced the Tracing into the world with the parameters I had set. As an afterthought, I slammed down on the button to engage the knife that was the hand to hand weapon of the Messiah, which fell away without a manipulator hand to grab it.

Above us a copy of Berserker's sword, hewn straight from one of the ancient temples dedicated to the Greek hero known to some as Heracles, appeared. It didn't stay there long, coming into the world at a considerable velocity, following a straight line towards the Vajra, which was now extending its flagellum in order to strike. It took four hundredths of a second for the gigantic weapon to travel fifty metres, but it struck with pinpoint accuracy, slamming into the creature just behind the head.

The effect was instantaneous. The giant hunk of rock pierced straight through it's defensive armour and burst out the other side just as easily, violently ripping the innards of the creature through the exit wound in an explosion of blue gore and imparting downwards momentum to the creature (although, I suppose corpse might be a better term at this point in time). It dropped below our flight path and continued to fall away as I cut the odo powering Berserker's axe-sword.

There was a second of silence as Saotome dialled back the engine power and turned towards our original destination, the S.M.S. dock. Then: "What was _that_?" Saotome asked softly over the comm, disbelief evident in his voice.

At this point in time I was _really_ hoping he was talking about the Vajra. I maintained my silence for a moment, using the scopes to spot Mikhail putting a sniper round through the head of the large red Vajra that the Squad Commander had been baiting. That took care of the immediate threat inside Island-One, but we had yet to hear anything regarding the situation in space.

"They're called Vajra," I replied over the comm. "And hopefully we've done enough damage to them that we can at least get back to base without being jumped."

"Not _that!_" He shot back, then paused, and continued a little sheepishly. "Well, I guess that too, but I was talking about that rock-thing just then."

"Bit of debris from the bubble I guess," I replied without missing a beat. The key thing here, and something I'd gotten used to a while ago, was the fact that people would just flat out ignore the evidence presented to them by their own eyes if presented with a reason that fit into their own logical world. Quite clearly the composition of Berserker's axe-sword did not match perfectly any of the materials used in the construction of the bubble, nor was it travelling at any angle that could be expected for a piece of falling debris. Yet still, Saotome didn't challenge me. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he talked himself out of the evidence _his own eyes _had presented him with earlier – that I had somehow known a piece of oversized sharpened rock would materialise and strike the Vajra and told him to stay the course before that happened.

"Umm, how about the rainbow thing?" Asked one Ranka Lee, the tone of her voice shaking, yet not betraying any deeper fear or hysteria at the situation.

Of course she would ask about Rho Aias. I mentally put ground my palm into my face, avoiding the actual physical action in order to maintain as much of an innocent aura as possible. The fact that one of my arms was broken helped in that regard. "What rainbow thing?" I asked back, putting as much genuine curiosity in my tone as possible.

"On the ground before you picked us up, a rainbow coloured light saved us from being burst to a crisp by your jets," I was informed, her voice losing it's shaky quality and almost reaching a tone of genuine enthusiasm by the end of her sentence. I shook my head slowly, a gesture both could easily see, seated behind me as they were.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," I slowly replied. "If you were that close to the thruster wash you'd be dead," I pointed all, radiating honesty (except for, well, the flat-out lying part). I shrugged. "You must have been further away than you thought."

I heard an intake of breath of Saotome's comm line, as though he was preparing to question me, but he apparently thought the better of it. Instead Ranka replied. "Hmm... I guess you're right." The green haired girl sounded like she was giving it thought even as she replied – I guess she bought into the story.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm not a professional con man.

At that exact point in time, I shivered almost unnoticably as another weird resonance rolled across my magic circuits. Unlike the charges that the small Vajra creatures had dropped earlier in space, this resonance played a longer beat across my circuits, rising and dropping in both intensity and frequency. I tried to liken it something, but the only thing that I could compare it to was maybe a bar of music.

And then it was gone.

Without contacting us, the blue and white variable fighters below us turned towards the same dock we were heading towards, and Mikhail's face appeared on a holo.

"Skull Four, return to base for reloading. We'll be deploying in vacuum as soon as it's done," Mikhail informed me, voice full of authority. I smiled – Ozma knew there was a very high chance Ranka was on board and was making Mikhail his mouthpiece for the time being. "Roger that," I replied, keeping the flicker of humour I felt at the situation from reaching my voice.

Another holo popped up on my HUD, crowding it even more. On this one was the subdued face of Luca. "The reason is unknown, but the enemy are withdrawing." Mikhail looked startled for half a second but recovered quickly; Luca had broadcast on an open channel and so as to not bring Ozma into it Mikhail would have to keep playing his role as Squad Commander for a few seconds.

"Understood Skull Three, return to Quarter. Mikhail out." And with that, he cut the channel. Luca's raised eyebrows betrayed his confusion for a second before his holo cut off as well. No doubt the Squad Commander was bringing Luca up to date on the delicate nature of situation in the back of my Messiah.

"Was that Luca Angelloni?" asked the boy behind me, but before I could answer Ranka piped up. "It was! Michel-kun, Luca-kun and Emiya-san are all in the same squadron," she bubbled enthusiastically. "Thank you so much for saving me Emiya-san!" I wondered if she was still a bit in shock – the girl was speaking so fast she was almost babbling. I brought up a view of the back seat into my HUD to check on Ranka, who was wedged rather uncomfortably on Saotome. I realised this was the first time I'd actually had a chance to get a decent look at him, and he was definitely not what I expected. The curves on his face were definitely feminine, and his long blue hair didn't dissuade me otherwise. If it wasn't for the fact he roared almost as hard as Lancer in combat, I'd almost think there were two girls in the seat behind me.

"Don't thank me," I replied. "Ever since I took that hit at the start my cockpit has been useless. You should thank Saotome, he did all the work." That was roughly true, minus the part where I had to take care of the last Vajra we encountered.

I zoned out as Ranka started talking to Saotome in the back. Instead I opened up a comm channel in the open. "Skull Four to Quarter."

Ram's face showed up on a holo. "Go ahead Skull Four," she replied in response to my hail.

"I've got two civilians on board. I suggest we have debriefing teams ready on the ground," I informed her, and she replied instantly.

"Roger that, I'll get it organised now."

"One of them is Ranka Lee, so maybe," and I pitched my in a conspiratorial whisper at this point, "you should get Ozma from personnel to come for that." Ram's face broadened and her eyes lit up dangerously.

"I'll see to it that happens," she replied. "But he seems to be in a shelter at the moment, hiding like the cat he is," she replied sweetly, honey dripping off every word. "He might be a bit late." I almost laughed, but kept a straight face. I could only imagine the fuming Ozma was doing silently right now – I had intended to confirm for Ozma on the down low that I had Ranka safe with me, but Ram had taken it a step further than necessary. Still, humour is humour even if I had to pretend not to enjoy it.

* * *

We were slightly delayed in landing to give Ozma time to get in and get away from his Messiah – it wouldn't do anyone any favours if Ranka spotted him clambering out of his bird. So as Saotome pulled up on the flight deck, it was none other than the Squad Commander waiting for us in civvies, with my ground crew anxiously waiting behind. He let out a low whistle as he surveyed the damage of my Messiah. It was quite impressive to say the least, what with the half the nose cone being crushed up to my cockpit and missing two manipulator arms.

"You okay in that?" he asked, a touch of concern riding his usually gruff voice as he nodded towards the section of crushed metal covering my arm.

"It feels fine," I lied with a brief smile. "I'll get Canaria to check it out just in case though. Once Robbs gets me clear of this bird in any case," I continued, throwing him a self-depreciating smile. "I guess you're here for my two passengers?"

"Sure am. Alright you two, hop out and follow me, I'll explain the procedures as we walk," the Squad Commander told the two kids behind me. My ground crew held their distance as Ranka clambered out, slipped a step and ended up on her butt on the floor. Saotome was a considerable sight more elegant, using his EX-gear to evacuate the training seat behind me. Ozma turned on his heels once Saotome hit the floor and lead the two children away, for what kind of debriefing I could only guess at. Maybe Ozma would give me the details later, but if not I made a mental note to check it out later.

I was definitely building up a list of things to check out at this place.

Once Ozma was away, the ground crew was in. Robbs came up to the cockpit almost immediately to cast his eye over the damage. I gave him ten seconds or so before I jokingly asked what he could do for me. The crew chief gave me a level look in reply.

"You're something else Shirou. I can see you've just about managed to paint the cockpit with your blood," - there was no denying that truth, it was everywhere - "and your arm is crushed under so much crumpled metal," he sounded a touch exasperated, showing concern in his own way. The dark haired man sighed and shook his head.

"I'll guess we'll have you out in twenty."

"There, that wasn't so hard," I told him, throwing out another smile. This guy was probably the person I'd spent the most time with since I'd gotten to Frontier, and by now I figured I had a pretty good idea of his habits and personality – so I was certain he wouldn't take true insult in the throwaway comment I made. I was proven right as he grinned back at me, then bellowed at an old man with a cutting saw to get stuck in around around the cockpit area.

The old guy seemed to know what he was doing and within fairly short order a large chuck of metal had been hacked off the side of my crumpled cockpit. As he backed out to switch tools, I accessed my circuits, feeling them thrum as I fed odo into a part of me that was hard to define. Long ago, during the Grail War, where I was first introduced to what it truly meant to be a magus and defender of justice, I had somehow awoken a strange healing power when I had summoned Saber, my servant. Anything short of an instantly fatal wound I could recover from, (and with some assistance, even what should have been an instantly fatal strike from a lance cursed to break the causality of cause and effect) although I had no idea why. After the war, Rin and I had spent some time researching the effect in London, and after determining how to activate it, the closest idea we could come up with was some kind of boundary field my father had placed around me that would activate when I had sufficient power to run it, which I could do in the Grail War by somehow pulling odo from Saber.

It was a theory with a hell of a lot of flaws in it, but we had no way to expand upon it before Space War I put a halt to any further research for the sake of curiosity. As far as I was now concerned, it was a mechanism to keep me alive and healed when I needed to.

So I used it.

I winced slightly as the old man came back with a rather large and mean looking pair of multi-grips. It was not the sight of the tool that gave me the shudders, rather the feel of my bone trying to pull itself together against the firm press of mashed steel holding it awkwardly apart. The multi-grips came down over the top of the remaining flaps of metal and locked into place. The balding crew member (Cheng was his name, I recalled distantly) opened his mouth with a little grin.

"This might sting a little."

And sting it did. It stung like hell! With a great heave he pulled the metal free, allowing my healing power to assert itself over my broken bone. I gasped in shock as I felt the bone finally pulled together and begin the re-bonding process. I gave the old man a semi-tortured look. "Just a little," I repeated bitterly, taking my sudden shock of healing out on the nearest valid excuse – him taking part of my arms away with the metal.

"Sorry about that," he apologised sincerely, "but look on the bright side," he continued, peering over the sheet of metal he'd levered off me. "It looks a bit mashed up, but your arm doesn't look broken. That'll fix right up!"

He was right. A quick glance at my arm had shown that it had managed to pull itself together, apparently (and thankfully) before the old crewman had gotten a look at it. I maintained the healing field, feeling it strengthen the bone for a second longer, then let it drop – there would be far too many questions asked if my arm was picture perfect after being under that hunk of metal.

"That's a bonus," I bit out in reply, allowing a single tear to roll off what I hoped was a fairly stoic face. "But I might just stay in here a minute or two while I recover from _that_ experience."

"Sounds like a plan," he responded affably, before disappearing down the side of the fuselage.

Finally, out of combat and with a bit of peace, I shut my eyes and slowed my breathing, grabbing a few quick minutes and using them to organise my thoughts.

The first thing that I was worried about was why did the Vajra choose now to attack us. It was my experience that even in such a large galaxy, such attacks were generally not a result of random encounters, which means either someone was calling the Vajra (deliberately or not) or they were searching for something (or someone). Well, it was impossible for me to figure out if the Vajra were targeting anything in particular, so I guess that would leave me focusing on anything happening recently on Frontier that would call the Vajra to us.

Wait a minute. Maybe there was some way to figure out if the Vajra were after something in particular. Twice during the battle there was that weird resonance across my circuits. The first was when I was dodging the charges out in space. Close to them I could feel the resonance, so maybe their activation was magical somehow. The second time was when we had just finished clearing the city itself of the invading Vajra, and I could think of nothing offhand as to what could have caused that one.

Regardless, the fact remained that the Vajra race could affect the flow of odo in my circuits and were a race that may have open access to magecraft. If so, there may be a way to use magecraft to communicate with them. Another pressing matter would be whether or not their abilities would impede with my ability to draw on my circuits. I mentally shrugged. They didn't today, and if they could, I'd deal with it when it happened.

My two minutes for introspection over, I clambered out of the cockpit and headed towards the medical bay, nodding to the crew members who were at work stripping the damaged components from my variable fighter.

* * *

After a quick jaunt to the medical bay, where Canaria assured me my arm was merely bruised, I found myself on standby with the rest of Skull Squadron, despite the fact my bird was currently mangled beyond air/space/land worthiness. Standby usually saw the squad loitering in a ready room attached to the VF hangar, but due to the semi-informal nature of S.M.S., pilots tended to spread around the hangar itself, assisting with maintenance and chatting to ground crews as the desire took them.

Due to my medical hold up, I found myself arriving in the ready room after Mikhail and Luca. Luca himself had blown through into the hangar, and peering through a window I spotted him, arms loaded with digital monitoring equipment, among his groundcrew. Mikhail was sprawled on a bench, shut eyes cracking open a touch as I walked into the room. "What happened to Princess Alto?" the sniper lazily enquired.

"Not sure," I replied evenly. "He and Ranka were taken off by the Squad Commander. Ask him when he's done."

"I see," he said, rolling off his side and onto his back.

"Schoolmate of yours? You guys seemed pretty surprised to hear each other on the comms," I observed as I passed him by, heading towards a data holo terminal set up in the corner of the room.

"Yeah," he confirmed for me, before continuing. "How did he go in the Messiah?"

"Well, I'm still in one piece," I noted, injecting a rising lilt into my voice to convey a joke that I didn't really feel. "He flies alright, but doesn't really understand basic combat tactics at all. How long has he been in the saddle?"

"Three years," came the lazy reply, and I gave Mikhail a nod so as to confirm that I received his answer, while continuing towards the holo terminal. A buzzing on my cell phone relayed orders from the bridge instructing me to take flight in Ozma's VF-25 if we were attacked before he finished debriefing the two kids. I fired off a short reply and folded myself down onto a bench opposite the terminal.

And so it was Ozma found me almost two hours later, perched in front of a holo terminal in the ready room, reviewing the holo-logs of the previous battle. I turned away from a shot of just after I had Traced the sword of Berserker, and none of the camera angles available to me had displayed it appearing, thankfully enough.

"Squad Commander," I greeted him. Mikhail had by now given up on trying to catch a little bit of sleep and repeated my greeting. Ozma acknowledged us with a nod, hooked a smallish chair with his foot and threw himself into it.

"So, here's our situation," he began without preamble, "we think they're all gone for the time being, so the city is lifting the evacuation and we'll be standing down in another hour or so. The corpses are being collected for study on Island-Three, and Shirou's new friend has been dismissed for the time being." Quick, and to the point. He stopped rather abruptly and favoured me and Mikhail with a look that read _ask questions now or don't bother._ The problem was that his speech opened a few more obvious lines of questioning. As it stood though, Mikhail beat me to it.

"You dismissed Alto? Just like that?" Mikhail asked incredulously, the look of surprise on his face accentuating his rising tone.

"We can't hang onto him legally until the government show up – it's their problem," Ozma clarified for us. "They'll probably pick him up tomorrow for a civilian debriefing, poor bugger."

"You didn't give him our number did you Ozma?" I cut in thoughtfully. "He wasn't a bad pilot – had a decent amount of natural talent at least."

"Nope, and currently couldn't give a damn," the Squad Commander said, and I nodded. If we were full, we were full. "What's his problem anyway?" Ozma asked the young sniper. "There is no way a kid should be that angry after coming out of a battle with unknown aliens," he groused.

Mikhail grinned in reply. "Alto has... many buttons to push if you know how. You probably hit one of them without knowing what you were doing."

Ozma groaned, leaned back in his chair and brought a hand to his forehead. "All I did was sit him in a room for an hour with Ranka and then told him that the information was currently classified. What button did that push?" the Squad Commander asked, a sigh punctuating his question.

"That button would be the 'you-kept-me-in-dark' button. Doesn't like stuff happening that he doesn't know about," Mikhail said, enlightening both the Squad Commander and myself. I must admit, I was surprised when Ozma seemed to think he had a few issues, as he hadn't made a huge fuss when he was in the cockpit. One of the advantages of suddenly placing a loud person in a life or death situation did involve them shutting up and concentrating though, so maybe I had that to be thankful for.

At that point our conversation was interrupted as a foot that came up to my thighs clomped down outside the window to the hangar and shook the room like a twig on a tree. I leaned out the door to see who was going past. Near the ceiling of the hangar a short (relatively short of course – it was still longer than me) mop of red hair informed me it was Ramaria walking past the VF section of the hangar towards the Queadluun cages.

It was just at that point in time that I realised I hadn't seen Pixie Squadron in the deployment list for the battle. That piqued my curiosity somewhat – they were the other ace squadron on the payroll, so it was unusual they weren't in vacuum earlier.

"Hey Ramaria!" I yelled up towards the Meltran. She paused mid step as she tried to identify the person speaking to her – I can only imagine how hard that could be for someone who is tall enough to perceive us as small animals. Eventually she spotted me hanging out the ready room door looking straight at her.

"Was that you Shirou?" the red haired Meltran boomed, her voice as gravelly as I ever remembered it from the night before.

"Sure was!" I yelled back up. "Where were you during the fight earlier?"

"Hungover as hell," she rumbled back with a smile, no shred of embarrassment entering her voice at all. There was a sudden moment of silence in the hangar.

Then everyone burst into laughter.

Huh. Must have been a common occurrence for her.

* * *

The standby passed without incident, so I finished up my day in my room, hunched over the terminal. Information gathering and processing was never a natural skill of mine, but as with piloting, years of practice had made it second nature. I needed the skill for my job, after all.

Currently I was poring through news feeds, trying to divine a cause for the Vajra attack. I didn't have the skills required to break into the more secure government databases, so teasing information from rumour and publicly available facts was my only option at this point. I started in the political sections, figuring that if anything, politicians were usually a slimy, secretive lot and were therefore the most likely people to be harbouring secret information about the Vajra.

I pored over the press release of the Frontier government, learning nothing new. The release was full of pacifying platitudes in order to keep the general populace under control. 'Unknown contacts' took the place of the word 'Vajra'. Several mentions were made regarding the loss of life inside the colony, and how the funerals would be covered by the fleet government. Several mentions were made of the valiant N.U.N.S. forces and their heroic efforts to drive off the 'unknown contacts' (hah), and how they would continue to defend the fleet to the best of their ability. Currently the fleet was clear of 'unknown contacts' so it was safe to get out and about. Following that, the office of the President released initial environmental data – a dry list of tables with no useful information.

All in all, from those sources, there was nothing flat out incriminating. Sure, there was censorship, but only of the level that the Vajra currently had within the government anyway. After an hour or so of poring over the release, carefully checking for any conflicting information, I was forced to conclude that the government were being mostly honest and upfront about the Vajra threat.

The statements released by parliamentarians in opposition likewise contained nothing useful. They were mostly claims that the government weren't being truthful with the information they'd given out, followed by calls for the truth. Nothing interesting there, save for the fact the shadow minister for xeno-ecology had yet to make a statement one way or the other. A lead, perhaps.

Moving on, I began to look into the events leading up to the Vajra attack. There was one big event leading up to the attack, and that was Sheryl's concert. As far as I was concerned, that was _definitely_ worth checking out. Completely unrelated as a concert may appear, I had long ago gotten over my prejudices involving the unlikeliness of music when investigating potentially catastrophic occurrences. I had no idea what I'd be searching for, but the best place to start would probably be the event location. I made a mental note to go snooping around the stadium when I had a chance.

Apart from that, there was precious little else that caught my eye. A couple of local sporting events had made the news, but no signs of violence or anything out of the ordinary there. A more thorough search of the news feeds revealed no signs of ritual activity – not that I expected it to. If the Vajra were communication using magecraft somehow, it would make sense that they could be the result of a magus' experiment. However, any magus that escaped my notice for fifty years or so would hardly allow themselves to be turned up by local reporters.

And on that note, I powered down the holo terminal and clambered into bed.

* * *

The next morning I found myself up earlier than usual and decided to work up an appetite in the dojo. Spending time there would also allow me to clear my mind somewhat and prepare mentally for the next few days. The S.M.S. dojo was less of a traditional place to practice martial arts and more of a place where a few mats thrown on the floor gave the members a chance to spar. In short, I felt it was lacking traditional feel to it; the only throwback to what I felt made a real dojo were two small Chinese characters written elegantly on a scroll on the wall – the characters for justice and honour.

Normally when I had made trips to the dojo it was for reflection – the area itself was typically not used by any personnel save for mandatory close combat training. So I was a bit surprised to find someone occupying my usual position in front of the Chinese characters in training clothes, especially this early in the morning. From where I stood with the door opened and my head poking through, I couldn't see much of the person, save for some tied up pink hair and pointy ears. Baggy training gear was hiding the rest of their defining features.

The features I were able to make out were enough for me to make a fairly educated guess that the person in front of me was Nene Rora, the Meltran pilot I'd first met two nights ago. I padded across the mats quickly and quietly, closing the distance between us. Even as I approached she made no move to acknowledge my presence, and so I mimicked her seiza position in a spot about two metres to her immediate left. The pink haired Queadluun pilot was breathing extremely rhythmically, so I was forced to conclude she was meditating and would not appreciate being disturbed.

Putting her from my mind for the time being, I began my own set of mental training exercises. Slowing my breathing and closing my eyes, I opened one of my circuits and let odo flow into me. In my head, an imaginary gun was cocked as I prepared to release the essence of my magecraft into a suitable container. The trigger on my imaginary gun was squeezed, and I pushed odo from my circuits into the training clothing I was wearing, Reinforcing it. I maintained the Reinforcement for two seconds, then with an measured exhale of breath removed the odo from my clothing. I slowly and deliberately retreated backwards through the preparation steps and closed my magic circuit.

Ever since just after the Holy Grail War I had been performing this ritual when I needed to clear my mind. As far as I was concerned it represented both a return to my roots as a magus by performing such a simple magecraft, and a representation of my ascension from utter hack to semi-competent magus. I found it useful to be reminded of my previous failures and the effort I had to put in before becoming what I was today, lest my ego becoming overbearing and my vision of who I was became corrupted. Indeed, it was this seemingly insignificant action that held me from utter madness when Rin died forty seven years.

But that didn't mean I came through that episode completely unchanged.

I drew breath, and opened another circuit, repeating the process for all of my magic circuits. As I was drawing odo for the seventeenth repetition, I noticed the breathing of the Meltran next to me pick up pace slightly. With my eyes shut, I split some of my attention into tracking her movement through sound as a low-level thought process. A rustle of clothes and a creak of the mat indicated she was standing up. She paused for nearly a minute as I continued though to my nineteenth circuit. A light brush of air and repetitive creaking on the mat heralded her passage behind me towards the wall opposite the door. A rattle. Oh right; that's where a pair of shinai were kept in an unassuming rack on the wall. She must have grabbed one.

Very soon the sounds I were hearing fell into a pattern. A creak, and exaggerated rush of air, followed by a receding creak, and the cycle would repeat again. I put it out of my mind as I completed my rituals. Eventually I came back to reality and stretched myself out. Confirming that Nene was indeed performing overhead kendo strikes against an imaginary opponent, I set to my own physical workout, a series of exercises designed to get my metabolism moving and increase my endurance. I had to truncate it somewhat, for fear of damaging my half healed arm, which in turn lead to me finishing up before Nene, who had been diligently throwing overhead strikes almost the entire time, adjusting angles and footwork on occasion.

I will admit; curiosity had grabbed me at this point in time. I knew someone was keeping the shinai's maintained – the lack of dust building up on the rack had confirmed that – but _Nene?_ Rationally I knew that she was Meltran, and therefore I should not be surprised that she was interested in methods of applying a beat down, but so far my impression of the pink haired Meltran definitely had me thinking she was somewhat of a helpful ditz.

I sucked down a swig of water from a bottle I had just filled in the change room, then filled a second, grabbed a face towel and walked back into the dojo. If she was able to handle a sword, maybe she'd be an acceptable sparring partner, which was something I'd been missing for the past ten years or so of my life. With sword fighting becoming considerably less common in this wide galaxy and the fact that my ability with a sword overshadowed almost all of my opponents over the past thirty years or so, I had been feeling that my abilities in a straight up fight had stagnated somewhat recently.

To put it bluntly, I couldn't gain experience points because all my opponents were too low a level for me.

Back out in the dojo I made eye contact with the Meltran and waved the water bottle and towel invitingly in her direction. She nodded almost imperceptibly but continued swinging. When I counted the thousandth swing of the sword less than a minute later, I tossed her the bottle and the towel. She caught the bottle in one hand and caught the towel on her head, it's unfolded form draping over her face and presumably filling her field of view with nothing but off white fabric.

A giggle burbled out from underneath the towel as she put the shinai down on the floor. Nene pulled the towel around her face, removing some sweat, before draping it over her shoulders and taking a long pull out of the bottle.

"So, you practice the way of the sword?" I asked from my corner of the room. "That's unusual for a Meltran."

"Yes, well, I've been doing kendo since I could walk," she admitted shyly. I mostly maintained my cool facade, but let a small amount of the astonishment I felt slip onto my face. This Meltran was dedicated!

"Why?" I probed. Surely there was some reason for it, some crazy reason that would hopefully make sense. Of course, if one takes into account the average Zentraedi's overbearing efforts to deify culture as being some kind of magical force capable of saving the world, there wasn't going to be one.

"Family tradition," I was informed sincerely. I maintained my look and she cracked under my not-so-obvious disbelief. She scratched her head sheepishly and looked embarrassed as she continued. "Well, that's what I'd like to say, but it's a bit more recent than that. My father once claimed he could beat any being in a fair fight, but lost a fight one on one with a kendo master."

"Did your father have any training in the way of the sword?" I cut in. She didn't seem to mind.

"None at all," she told me, all smiles. A snicker from me heralded a full-blown laugh from both of us. There was no way any old Zentran could take a master with a sword in a sword fight, no matter how proficient they were in other forms of close combat. I was beginning to see how this tale was shaping up now and had a fairly good idea how it would end.

After our laughter subsided, she continued. "So he swore then and then that he and his descendants would train until they were masters at the art." I closed my eyes, and an image of an overly dramatic Zentraedi clutching one fist to his chest and screaming at the heavens filled it for a second before I dispelled the ridiculous image from my mind. Damn thing reminded me of a bad comic book.

"Of course my mother stomped that 'and my descendants' idea out of him pretty quickly, but I had a... natural talent for it, I guess, so I just kept going." I nodded. I knew the feeling of doing something simply because because you were half decent at it. I shifted the direction of the conversation.

"I guess we must have been missing each other in here then, because I'm fairly regular down here, but never see you here." It was a fair observation, and a subtle dig to find out if she came down often enough to be worth the time.

"Usually not this early, no. But I missed the last battle because I was trapped on Island Three with my family, so I felt the need to make it up somehow," she told me softly, the smallest hint of self-recrimination seeping into her soft tone.

"Nothing you could have done about that," I assured her.

"I suppose," she replied distantly, then brought herself back to reality. "Do you practise the sword Shirou?"

Finally, the question I was hoping she'd ask!

"I do actually, although not the traditional forms you're probably used to," I informed her helpfully. That was an understatement and a half. I didn't so much follow forms as much as I forced my opponent to attack openings in my strikes and parries. Once they went after the deliberate openings, I could counter. Even if I was open, if there was only one opening, then I knew where the attack was coming from, and I could formulate a hopefully damaging counter to that.

Seeing as putting openings in my stance depended as much on my opponents weapons as it did on mine, there was no point in learning proper forms for a style of combat, and I instead relied upon my speed, strength and reflexes to dictate my swordplay.

"Really?" the tell Meltran asked, raising an eyebrow. "I've seen some exotic styles around, I'd be surprised if I can't recognise yours," she told me with a confidence I had not yet seen in her. It would appear she was confident in her skill at deciphering styles then, and possibly in her own skills as well.

"Well, how about a spar sometime then," I offered lightly. "Then you can see for yourself."

The Meltran nodded cautiously. "Sounds good," she told me, accepting the challenge. And that was that. We finished off our water bottles over small talk regarding the pros and cons of training with a shinai in preparation for a hypothetical drawn steel battle. (Well hypothetical for her at least, I'd been through my fair share of live fights), before continuing on with our day.

* * *

As it turned out, the rest of my day involved a decent amount of manual labour. With my arm bruised and not fully healed, and my Messiah still grounded pending urgent repairs, I'd offered myself to Robbs to assist with repairs, provided I avoided heavy lifting. He'd accepted gratefully, knowing that I knew a thing or two about the variable fighter and also aware that there was a fair bit of work to be done before it was space-worthy again. As far as I was concerned, it was win-win all around. My crew would be more inclined to believe me if I detected problems with the bird using Structural Grasp magecraft if I hung around during repairs, and it would get me back in the air faster.

Around five in the afternoon, as we were preparing to finish up for the day, Ozma burst into the hangar. Right on his tail, looking a decent mixture of angry and lost, was the kid I'd introduced to combat yesterday, Alto Saotome. I couldn't make out what he was saying from where I was, but his mouth was working like a motor and his anger appeared to be directed at Ozma, who was letting it wash off him as he scanned the hangar. I caught his eye and he nodded, breaking into a powerful ground covering stride towards me which had Saotome struggling to keep up.

"Thought you didn't care about him," I mentioned off handedly to the Squad Leader as he approached, Saotome having now shut up and instead glowering at the two of us. I favoured the kid with another glance and he matched it, anger in his eyes. I shrugged back at him.

"I caught the N.U.N.S. trying to make him a job offer. I couldn't sit there and let him kill himself by choosing to fly their buckets of junk," Ozma replied grumpily. "But the silly kid can't recognise his good luck, he just keeps bitching about wanting to know what's going on and demanding to see you." Ozma rolled his eyes back theatrically and rested his forehead in his raised hand. Well, if that's the way he wanted to play it...

'What does he want to see me for?" I asked, allowing confusion to infuse my voice. I had a good idea...

"Because you're the only one who gave me half a hint of what's going on!" Saotome roared, cutting over the top of me and Ozma.

Bingo.

In response, me and the Squad Commander nailed him with a pair of death stares, and he shut his trap pretty quickly. His general temperament of a pot sitting just under the boil was maintained though, reinforcing my impression the kid had some backbone in him, not willing to back down even in the face of the raw violence emitted by the Squad Commander and myself.

"Saotome," I said, my voice deadly neutral. "The only information I gave you that you haven't been able to find out after the fact was the name of their species. What made you think I could suddenly enlighten you further?"

Saotome glowered at me but remained silent. Ozma stood silent, backing me up with his physical presence.

I dropped my voice to just above a whisper. "Why do you even _care?_"

Whatever answer he was preparing was lost as the hangar erupted into general confusion. Alarms starting blaring, warning holo's flashed into existence above our heads and Bobby's voice echoed through the hangar, courtesy of the Quarter's P.A. system.

"Mission code: Victor. Repeat – Mission code: Victor has been issued."

The hangar began to move with a sense of urgency now. I spotted Mikhail and Luca emerging from the ready room, flight suits on and bee-lining towards the EX-gear storage.

"All squadrons scramble," Bobby concluded. The buzz in the hangar kicked up a notch at that. Ozma turned around and bellowed to the hangar in general. "Skull squadron! Prepare for scramble!"

I pulled up in a salute, knowing full well that I'd unfortunately be on the sidelines for this one. "Understood!" I exclaimed stiffly in reply. Across the hangar Mikhail and Luca halted their movement to salute across the hangar at Ozma before continuing on. Saotome looked lost as Ozma turned away to prep his gear and I turned away to get my VF-25 stowed away – currently it was nothing more than an unwanted obstacle in the hangar, and as such it the duty of my crew and I to get it safely stowed and out of the way before the rest of the squadron could launch.

At that point in time Captain Wilder's voice came through over the P.A. Wilder was the grizzled Captain of the Macross Quarter and his expertise in large scale fleet and capital ship combat was unmatched within our organisation. "Gentlemen," he began in his never-perturbed voice, "the enemy is a survivor of yesterday's battle. It's broken through the gate and already knocking on the front door, meaning there will be combat within the convoy space itself. Time to clean up after ourselves!"

As far as motivational speeches went, it wasn't bad, but I was far too busy attaching the front of my VF-25 to a tow-cart that was going to be used to get it out of the way to pay too much attention to what he said. Ozma rushed back, apparently having geared up in less than thirty seconds (I briefly wondered if he was just wearing his flight suit under his civvies and simply found the nearest telephone booth to rip his clothes off, rather than making it all the way back to the ready room.)

As he did Saotome called out to him, looking for direction in the controlled chaos that the hangar had become. "Hey! What about me?"

Ozma turned mid stride and gave him a flat stare, as if to tell him to remove himself from our hangar and building as soon as humanly possible. Saotome stood his ground, his face somehow exuding obstinance. "Let me ride a Valkyrie!" he demanded and at that point I knew he'd crossed the line from courageous to stupid. Ozma gave him a grin that could have meant _anything_. I had quite literally never seen such a difficult to decipher grin in my entire life, and that was even after having spent time with the pocket rocket Rin Tohsaka in my early days before I had learned how to decipher people.

Then the Squad Commander's fist came back, and with an audible crack I felt certain was heard on the other side of the fleet, drove it straight into Saotome's cheekbone, sending the kid stumbling back several feet into an oversized toolbox. The poor kid couldn't get in control of his unexpected motion and went bum down unceremoniously in a tangle of loose tools and trays.

"Shirou! Get this kid out of here to a safe zone!" the Squad Commander ordered me, before spinning on one foot and hot footing it towards his bird. "I don't have time to deal with his mouthing off!"

I looked at Robbs, who nodded at me, then swung on one foot and grabbed the dazed Saotome by the shoulder, hauling him towards the door. "Come on Saotome, lets get you out of here," I said gruffly. He'd seemed to have recovered his wits by the time I'd finished leading him through the buzzing S.M.S. headquarters, and by the time I was escorting him out of the door the only obviously result of his run-in with Ozma was a bright red mark along his cheekbone, which would no doubt start to bruise up nicely overnight.

As I dragged him onto a moving walkway leading towards the parkland around our headquarters, he piped up. "You should try not acting for once, you'll forget who you are," he grumbled bitterly. His words shook me – he was the first person since coming to Frontier that had suggested that I possibly wasn't who I claimed to be – the first inkling that maybe my ability to deceive others wasn't as good as I thought. I didn't reply.

"So now you're the silent type?" he continued, perhaps emboldened by my lack of response. "The others might miss it, but I can tell clear as day that you're playing by a script that's not your own."

I briefly wondered if the Saotome knew what he was touching on when he said that, and considered for a brief moment if it would be easier to Trace Kanshou and Bakuya in order to separate his head from his shoulders than deal with him normally. Instead I put it down to his personality – trying to maintain control over his situation even as it was rapidly eroding around him. I did have to hide just how much his words shook me though – I was surprised he could get under my skin that easily.

As we reached the lip of the parkland I paused as a soft voice filtered down from above us, singing lyrics of a song I didn't entirely recognise but sat on the edge of my memory. Saotome seemed similarly transfixed. The voice was beautiful, lilting in ways I could never hope to pitch my rough voice. We crested the ridge and quietly took a few steps forwards, hoping to not ruin the singer's concentration. Up on the very highest point in the park, near the bubble viewport providing line of sight into the starry vacuum, a definitely feminine figure clad in a thick white coat was in the process of removing her ostentatious blue hat and loud sunglasses. I didn't need to Reinforce my eyes in order to tell who that was.

Sheryl Nome, the galactic fairy, providing a free recital for Ranka Lee.

Ranka herself was at the bottom of a set of stairs, staring reverently up towards the fairy, apparently lost for words. I chanced a glance at Saotome, who looked up at the scene, bamboozlement painted on his face. He stepped forwards towards the pair, leaving me a step behind.

"You two?" He asked levelly, his confrontational tone from earlier lost at the absurdity of the situation.

Ranka and Sheryl turned to look at us. Ranka was the first to speak. "Emiya-san! The boy from earlier!" she let out, a garbled hush. Ozma's sister looked just as surprised to see us out here as I was to see the two girls. Sheryl, on the other hand, was much more assertive. She squared herself up and dramatically flung her microphone out (apparently carried just in case she spontaneously burst into song for no apparent reason), using it to point at Saotome. He responded by favouring her with semi-confused look, no doubt wondering what on earth the diva was doing out here.

"I've found you! Saotome Alto!" she exclaimed.

I ground my face into my palm. Last night I was pondering the best way to investigate Sheryl's concert, and never once did could I imagine that the woman herself would simply walk down to talk to the person who's safety I was currently in charge of. Somewhere, somehow, I knew that a personification of Alaya was leaning over a desk somewhere, using it's hands to hide a forming grin on it's face. If I listened hard enough I knew I'd be able to hear the words "All according to plan."

There was simply no way it was coincidence I was here right now, in this company. This was simply reinforced in my head when a large type Vajra powered into position just outside the view bubble, throwing a large shadow over all of us.

"You have the _best_friends," I told Saotome deadpan.

* * *

Authors notes:

_These things keep getting longer and longer! Perhaps the most interesting thing about writing this is having Shirou slot in with the current cast. He's definitely changed from his ending, which for those of you still wondering was the true end of UBW. There are a few events in the intervening 55 years or so which have made him doubt his ideals and beliefs that he came to defend so hard in UBW. Near genocide will do that to you I suppose._

_His character as I seem to be writing it however tends to slot two main slots already occupied in the show – the hero, Alto, and the grizzled vet, Ozma. I realised this in this chapter (should have probably twigged earlier, oh well) so he may end up spending time with lesser members of the crew in order to not be drowned out by Alto and Ozma doing what they do._

_Alto is a tough character to write, especially early in the piece when he's still trying to figure out why he's fighting the Vajra. His major motivation for initially jumping in a VF-25, Gilliam's death, is absent in this continuity (well, happened two months before the Vajra attack, but eh) so I'm hoping to play on his need to prove himself to get him in the seat._

_Anyways, it was a blast writing this chapter, so I hope you're enjoying it. Take it easy guys!_


	4. On Your Marks

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 4: On Your Marks

* * *

The large type Vajra loomed large beyond the carbon-glass separating the four of us from space. It waited there, choosing not to strike, instead simply appearing to stare us down. It was at that point Ranka broke the silence with a fearful scream and positively _bolted_ back behind Saotome, grabbing a handful of his shirt in the process. Given the fact that if the Vajra broke through the bubble viewport we were all going to suffer an oxygen deprivation related death, I wondered how that could possibly make her feel any better. Even as that idle thought crossed my mind, I opened myself up to my magic circuits – I was in a battlefield now, so it was time to play serious.

With that particular thought in mind, I scanned the park. Emergency protocols on the Frontier fleet dictated that there be at least one entrance for an emergency shelter per hundred square metres of floorspace (one of the good things about fleet based life was the fact that there were redundancies for almost every conceivable occasion), so by rights there should be a slightly more secure spot around us. Sure enough, barely ten metres away, the distinctive alternating red and black pattern indicating an emergency shelter was tattooed onto the floor.

Saotome, displaying his usual coolness in combat, stood there with his mouth hanging open. I sighed and opened my mouth to direct everyone towards the shelter, even as the Vajra raised one it's limbs to contemptuously shatter the metre of carbon-glass between it and us, but was interrupted as I spotted a trio of VF-25's pull out from underneath our field of view, riding trails of blue fire. The lead Messiah was clearly Ozma's VF-25S, clad in an Armored FAST Pack. The Squad Commander completed a transformation to battloid mode as he closed on the target, colliding rather unceremoniously with the large Vajra and using his momentum to propel the (apparently) surprised Vajra away from the bubble viewport.

Seeing as the immediate threat to our oxygen supply was gone, I shut my mouth. I watched on as Ozma's VF-25S drew a bead on the still flailing Vajra with his gunpod and peppered it with shells. In a similar fashion to the battle earlier, the shells did almost nothing in the way of real damage to the large type Vajra, but the constant impacts, flashes and smoke appeared to temporarily stun the red creature.

In the meantime, Mikhail and Luca had blown past the immediate battle, opting instead to get some distance as their loadouts dictated. Mikhail could no doubt pop the head off the alien creature but needed a fair bit of range to do so safely. I actually hadn't seen Luca in combat, but typically recon variable fighter models were never frontline units, so I wasn't really expecting him to get involved with the melee.

The large Vajra recovered quickly when the Squad Commander finished his initial burst, and responded by propelling itself forwards and swinging it's clawed forelimb at the chest region of the variable fighter. The strike was good and sent the commander variant Messiah reeling. Oddly enough, despite the violence happening out in vacuum, the only sounds I heard were a pair of twin gasps as Ranka and Sheryl voiced their shock at the results of the strike. I chanced a glance at both girls – Sheryl was staring at the combat but slowly backing down the stairs (whether she was frightened or merely sensible I couldn't guess, as she was still facing away from me) and Ranka tried to edge futilely further behind Saotome. Saotome himself narrowed his eyes in response to something happening in the melee, so I turned my attention back to space, where Ozma's Messiah was now grappling the creature.

What I wouldn't give to be patched into the comm right now. The mass of metal and carapace continued to roll in space as both the Squad Commander and the Vajra he was grappling struggled to gain an upper hand. Surprisingly, there was no support fire from our support destroids on the docked Quarter. It was probably a safe assumption that the government was having troubles pulling it's finger out and authorising fire support – an assumption quickly proved as Luca's green Messiah pulled around in a flare of of vectoring thrust and transformed to GERWALK mode, levelling it's gunpod at the grappling combatants. I shook my head. The targeting computers on the Messiah were definitely a step above the standard VF-171, but a standard Howard GU-17A 58mm Gatling gunpod definitely did _not_ have the kind of precision for the kind of shot Luca was trying to make.

Ozma was clearly struggling in the melee with the Vajra – the greater mass of the creature didn't really help when trying to overpower it by strength alone. As they wobbled around in space, the Vajra began spitting imitation cannon shells from it's wrist mounted weapon. It was definitely time to start heading towards the emergency shelter now – the way Ozma and the Vajra were throwing themselves around, it was only a matter of time before one of those random bursts of imitation shells tore a hole through our protection. Even as I made that conclusion, a shuddering rumble reverberated through the floor, no doubt indicating the imitation cannon shells igniting a fuel line somewhere near us.

"Guys," I began, all business. "I don't want to alarm you _too_ much, but this isn't a very safe place to be right now."

Sometimes I don't know why I bother. Neither Saotome, Ranka nor Sheryl seemed to pay any attention to me, choosing to instead gawk at the melee. I forcibly grabbed Saotome's shoulder and spun him around to face me, shaking him out of his stupor.

"Take Ranka over to the emergency shelter over there," I told the kid, indicating the shelter behind us. He stared at me, furrowing eyebrows and tightening eyes drawing a picture of defiance on his face. Saotome opened his mouth to argue instinctively against me, but then his brain must have caught up with him. His mouth caught open, he glanced out at the flailing melee, and he must have finally realised the mortal danger he was in. The blue haired kid gave me a grudging nod. I let go of him and turned to get Sheryl down to the shelter when I stopped. Sometime in the few seconds it took for me to get Saotome heading in the correct direction Mikhail's blue variable fighter had disappeared. An out of place reflection betrayed his rough position to me - an antenna nest slightly more than two kilometres down the hull of Island One. Without thinking I found myself Reinforcing my eyes, the increased contrast and sharpness easily allowing me to discern his firing position within the cluster of metal.

Before I could blink, a flash of light split the vacuum. Mikhail's sniper round found the head of the creature, punching a hole clean through it despite the incredible difficulty associated with shooting into melee. It was hard not to grin with satisfaction – despite my initial misgivings about having children in the squadron, it appeared both Luca and Mikhail definitely were aware of what they were doing in this company. Saotome looked disgruntled as he digested what just happened. "He hit the thing," the kid exhaled, a sliver of resentment in his otherwise awed voice. The Squad Commander's Messiah relaxed it's grip on the motionless alien, backing away to observe Mikhail's handiwork. I allowed myself to relax too, exhaling slowly as I closed my magic circuits.

Big mistake.

A twitch along the Vajra's forearms was the only warning Ozma got before the headless creature forcibly grabbed the manipulator arms of the Messiah. With a twist and a heave, Ozma was sent spinning away from the Vajra. Sheryl winced at the toss, apparently feeling some sort of sympathy for our would-be rescuer. She upgraded the wince to a muted scream as the Vajra levelled it's wrist mounted imitation cannon at the out of control variable fighter and peppered it with small explosions. The Squad Commander's variable fighter was slow to recover, but given what I knew of Ozma there was little doubt he was injured, not shaken.

The Vajra must have decided that now was the chance it needed to get out of its unfavourable position. It wheeled around - whether or not it was looking for an escape route or attempting to attack us, I couldn't tell – but as it did so the creature's tail carapace came into contact with the carbon-glass above our heads. A loud crack heralded a change in Sheryl's posture, and panic scrawled itself over her face in large lettering. Above our heads the carbon glass was spiderwebbing away from the point of impact and it would only be a matter of milliseconds until –

A whistling sound cut off my train of thought as the atmosphere sped past us, heading out towards the new hole in the viewport where space was trying to enter Frontier itself at the cost of our air. I turned towards Saotome. "Get in there now!" I roared, trying to lift my voice above the rising volume of the gale. To his credit he didn't waste any time, dropping his heel hard to engage the emergency opener. As he swept the stunned Ranka up in his arms, I was already turning towards Sheryl, who was heading towards the shelter as fast as she could in heels and her tight dress.

It was nice to see that someone had finally found a sense of personal danger, pity it was so late to manifest that it was nigh on useless. I closed in on Sheryl, who was starting to struggle as the volume of the wind rose to a roar of outrushing atmosphere. Truth be told, I was starting to struggle a little too, but I had methods of compensating for that so I wasn't worried about myself in the slightest. Sheryl, on the other hand, was still wearing panic on her face, though the set of her feminine jaw implied a certain amount of determination as well. The galactic fairy stumbled – in response I automatically lowered my hand to stabilise her.

"Don't touch me," she belted out as she corrected her footing, the look on her face even more determined than it was before. I withdrew my hands silently and we made it the rest of the way to the emergency shelter as fast as we could. As we arrived, Sheryl shot me a wary glance for a reason I couldn't fathom. In response I pointed at the hole in the floor.

"Get in," I ordered, injecting the tone of command into my voice. Sheryl flushed, held down the front of her dress (I guess that's why she gave me a funny look earlier) and _jumped_ down the hole with a short scream. Jumped, while wearing _heels_. With a ladder right _there_. I quickly peered down the hole after her. Instead of the broken leg I expected to see, I saw the galactic fairy crawling away from the landing zone fairly steadily, and even had the nerve to give me a shaky wink as I dropped down the two metres and landed with a dull thump next to her. As soon as my boots rang off the metal floor Saotome slammed his hand down on the emergency seal button, causing the trapdoor above my head to slam shut.

"Well, that was fun," I commented dryly to no-one in particular.

* * *

My initial sarcasm aside, the situation inside the shelter turned sour in a hurry. As the adrenaline wore off, Saotome collapsed against the wall opposite Sheryl, dragging an attached Ranka down into a somewhat compromising position. Neither seemed to care. Instead of joining them, I scanned the room, taking stock of our situation. It wasn't ideal, but there was a lot more going for us in here than there was outside. Oxygen, for starters. The emergency shelter itself was simply a circular corridor about two metres wide by two metres high, with bulkheads sealing off both ends of the corridor to giving us about eight metres of length. To be honest, it looked more like a service tunnel than a shelter. It wasn't a huge stretch of the imagination to assume a place like this was actually such a tunnel, doubling as a shelter by sealing those bulkheads when the external shelter access button was activated.

"What the hell was that?" Sheryl exclaimed, a touch breathlessly.

Saotome didn't bother making eye contact with the strawberry blonde diva. "Like I'd know," he muttered derisively. "Ask Mr-military-provider over there, he does."

Sheryl turned to me, the question in her eyes. "If you don't already know, that classified information," I told her shortly, and Saotome snorted.

"Fat lot of help you are," he grumbled. "Damn," he continued, talking to himself. "Saved by _him_ again." No doubt the young blue haired boy was referring to Mikhail, who'd technically driven off the larger Vajra. Saotome turned to stand up, but found the movement impeded by the younger Lee sibling, who was firmly latched onto his school shirt.

"Move it," he commanded grumpily. When she didn't move he softened his tone somewhat before continuing to prod her verbally, thank goodness. The last thing I needed now was for Ranka to freeze up more than she already was - the green haired girl was acting as though she was in a state of shock. Despite several attempts to pull herself off his shirt, she was failing miserably.

"Come on Ranka, easy now," I encouraged the girl. Saotome was rapidly wearing through his thin patience, at least if I was any judge, and almost immediately after I spoke opened his mouth to give the poor girl a blasting.

"Come on alrea-" he began angrily, but finally met her eyes, which were tearing up and clearly displaying her fear and shock, and let his words die. The kid had some serious empathy issues if it took him this long to work out that Ranka was in shock. Briefly I wondered if tossing him out the emergency exit would save our lives down here. Sadly, I doubted it.

Ranka finally managed to free herself with an exaggerated cry and attempted to convince us she was fine with an overly excited cry of "I'm alright!" I refrained from commenting (seeing as I wasn't sure I could say anything that wouldn't display my disbelief at that statement). Saotome gave Ranka a long stare usually reserved for patients in psychiatric wards.

Sheryl, on the other hand, piped up from next to us. "Can't you tell a couple of scared girls that you'll protect them?" she demanded in a voice that clearly showed her lack of faith in our abilities at being men.

Saotome, predictably, rose to the challenge. "Shove it!" he shot right back, hammering a fist on the metal behind him for emphasis. "If the situation let me, I'd say it all you want!"

I was quite unsurprised to find that the blue haired student was just as candid with a galaxy wide celebrity as he was with me.

Sheryl Nome, apparently _supremely_ unsatisfied with the answer, turned to bring her full regal bearing down on me. "And what's your excuse Mr-military-provider?" she demanded of me, the disdain in her tone suddenly levels higher.

I shrugged, letting her attempt to browbeat me using her celebrity status flow off me like water off an umbrella. I wasn't Zentraedi, after all. "He's mostly right," I replied, in a considerably more civil tone than Saotome had managed. While I could deal with the Saotome's posturing and anger by mostly ignoring it, if the young boy managed to fire up Sheryl, me and Ranka would be stuck in a verbal crossfire that neither of us wanted. "We're a lot safer in here than we are outside, at least for the moment. And my name is Shirou Emiya, thanks for asking."

Just because I had to be polite, doesn't mean I was going to let her walk all over me.

She eyed me askance, but thankfully didn't blow up like Saotome would have. "Well, lets at least get out of here. Mentally speaking, it seems like we could all benefit from that," she responded haughtily. I silently thanked Alaya that despite the diva's tone, she was at least able to keep her feet on the ground and keep sight of our short term survival goals.

"That's impossible," said Saotome, calming down a bit. "This is a real emergency bolthole. It's completely sealed off from the main dome."

Sheryl shot a panicked glance up and down the length of the shelter. "You mean we're stuck in here?" she warbled out, her pitch higher than I was used to hearing. Ranka squawked incoherently from her spot near Saotome – the possibility must have only just hit her. "What do you think Shirou?" she asked me, using my first name with a casual disregard for what I considered good etiquette. Sure, I was on a first name basis with a lot of my new co-workers, but they weren't Japanese. There was a reason Saotome was Saotome to me. "Is he wrong, or can you call out on some military channel for rescue?"

"Firstly," I replied in a level voice while flicking up a finger, "I'm not in the military and have no sway with them whatsoever. I'm part of a civilian military contractor." I put a second finger up. "Secondly, I don't have any communication gear on me in any case." Sheryl look slightly disappointed at that, as though having _someone _in a uniform was an instant get out of jail free card (or an instant get out of emergency shelter free card in our case).

"Thirdly," I finished up by raising a third finger, "Saotome has been living here his entire life. I only got here two weeks ago, I'm not as familiar with the emergency systems as he is."

"Could I be be stuck with a more useless pair of men?" she said with a condescending sniff.

"Well how about you?" I asked levelly. "You're a major celebrity, surely you have some kind of panic button?"

She coloured. I got the feeling I wasn't going to like her response.

"I was trying to go undercover so I didn't take my trackers," the strawberry blonde diva muttered, her haughtiness drained at having been called out. I met her eyes; they were defiant still, despite the change in tone.

"Right," I concluded abruptly. "So you're stuck with two useless men, and I'm stuck with a useless celebrity. Looks like the only useful one here is Ranka then." It took a real effort not to roll my eyes and sigh; all we were doing right now were winding each other up, no matter how correct I might have been. Regardless, morale was everyone's problem, so I changed the direction of conversation. Truth be told, it wasn't _entirely _a random change of direction.

"Well Sheryl, I bet you weren't expecting this kind of excitement when you arrived." I began after a minute or so of silence. I was probing her to try and determine if she knew more about the Vajra than she let on; but I didn't care so much about her reply so much as I cared about her subconscious reactions to my question.

I was disappointed.

"I wasn't expecting anything like this," she replied, having calmed down somewhat. She met my eyes evenly, and none of her actions indicated she was lying to me. No glance away to the left, no tapping of the foot, no checking her pockets. "If I had've known we were going to get attacked here I would have cancelled my tour," she groused quietly to me. I nodded sympathetically. If she was innocent then there was no point in making her suspicious of me by pushing further. If she wasn't innocent then she probably would have read that question as one of casual curiosity. Or so I hoped.

"Ah well, at least you'll be heading home soon enough," I said to the room at general. Ranka pulled herself out of a wilted slump to nod with enthusiasm, desperate to jump on any good news. Saotome grunted in agreement as he loosened his tie and undid a few more buttons from the top of his shirt. It hit me then that another test to see if Sheryl was possibly calling the Vajra would be to see if the attacks maintained when she left the fleet. My initial thoughts told me that Sheryl wasn't directly involved at least – she was genuinely scared earlier out in the park and didn't seem to be hiding anything.

The galactic fairy undid the front buttons on her coat and stood up, showing off a strapless crimson dress underneath. I shrugged out of my S.M.S. jacket, wiping some sweat off my face as I did so.

"Geez, it's getting hot," Sheryl complained, fanning herself down with her loose jacket. I raised an eyebrow - personally I didn't think it was that bad now that I had my jacket off.

Oh, _damnit_.

I hadn't paid much attention to it earlier, because I have a fairly high tolerance for temperature variations, but it was getting hotter. In an emergency shelter that meant one thing – the air recirculation wasn't working. I barely had time to expand on that thought before the shelter was violently rocked, presumably by an explosion further up the hull of Island One. Sheryl, the only person on her feet, wavered for a second before the combination of heels and short dress threw her balance off.

To make makes worse for us, the power chose that moment to go out, throwing the room into pitch blackness for a second. There was a slap and a thump as Sheryl finally completed her fall then the room was bathed in a dull red glow as the emergency lighting kicked in.

Well, I can say this for the galactic diva; she has a _great_ back.

Sheryl was sprawled over Saotome, having apparently fallen on him in the dark. She wasn't the only thing that had fallen as well. The top of her dress had come down as well, and no doubt Saotome was getting a good eyeful. Sheryl groaned as she pulled herself off Saotome.

"Geez, what was that about," she grumbled, apparently unaware of Saotome ogling her assets. Luckily for her, Ranka was there to raise the alarm with a squawk of "Sheryl-san!" as the normal lights came back on. The diva looked around for a second in confusion then finally realised what the three of us had definitely already noticed (how she didn't feel it slipping off as she fell I have no idea). From almost directly behind her I couldn't see her expression as she pulled her dress up, but

Saotome's look described it all for me.

The poor blue haired kid looked on wide eyed with the look of a man who knew it wasn't his fault but was going to end up with the blame for it anyway. Sheryl's open hand descended upon his cheek at high velocity, giving him another red mark to match the one Ozma gave him earlier. As Saotome was recovering from the shock, Sheryl swung around, aiming another slap at me, which I adroitly avoided. She swung again and I hopped a step back.

"If you keep that up I'm going to see more than just your bare back," I warned the young songstress.

"You just saw my body in _person_," she insisted, still swinging at me. "You must pay the price! It's quite a bargain, if I do say so myself."

I kept dodging her strikes – it wasn't hard, she was telegraphing each slap quite badly. Saotome had recovered from his shock and was clearly of the opinion that such a service didn't match the cost.

"It's overpriced!" The blue haired boy spat out, still nursing his cheek. Him piping up like that caused Sheryl to stop mid swing to glare at him, and I made care to give myself a bit more distance while she was distracted. "You show most of it off on stage anyway!"

A faint red stained Sheryl's cheeks as she realised the accuracy of his words. She wasn't backing down though. "That's not my private life. This and that are different!" the strawberry blonde girl insisted. Fortunately for me, she seemed to have given up trying to exact a toll from my flesh in favour of attempting to hold the dress up at a modest height. "Keep your lecherous eyes of me, pervert!"

I wasn't sure how she was reading his eyes, because all I could see in them was open anger and defiance. "Who are you calling a pervert?" Saotome shot back, full of righteous fury. I found myself agreeing with Saotome; he didn't exactly pull down the top of her dress. Regardless, we were now in a rather deteriorating situation.

"You are, you damn kid!" came Sheryl's reply, her voice rising a few decibels.

"Shut up, you damn exhibitionist!"

Behind the bickering pair of kids, Ranka was looking around frantically – for what I had no idea. Her eyes lit up though as she found it, and with a short "Ah!" she shuffled over to her left. The gasp attracted the attention of Saotome and Sheryl, who swung around from their argument to glare at Ranka. I'm sure my curious gaze didn't help much either, but Ranka gamely managed to hold her nerve and smile back at the three of us.

"I-is anyone hungry?" I'm sure she wasn't really feeling the energy she put into her voice, but she was trying. In a rare moment of sympathy, I felt like applauding the young green-haired girl – she was trying to defuse the sour situation in her own way. In her lap she was holding a pink lunch-box with a 'Nyan Nyan' label on it – that must have been what she was looking for earlier (where she had hidden it earlier I have no idea, I hadn't seen it on her at all when we were up in the park).

"I brought along some snacks from my work," she continued. "Nyan Nyan's famous steamed tuna buns!"

Steamed buns were a Chinese food that had been brought to Japan long before I was born, so I was fairly familiar with them. When I was a child I had often enjoyed the mixture of meat and dough, and my stomach panged for a second as I remembered the taste of them from simpler days. Ranka popped the top of the lunch-box as we leaned over, the hostility in Sheryl and Saotome's faces replaced with curiosity. Stacked neatly inside was a pair of steamed tuna buns, the shape matching almost exactly the memories of my youth.

For some reason though, the chef had somehow gotten the top of each bun to colour pink, and the overall impression I got from two buns reminded me of, well, a shapely, doughy pair of breasts. A small smile crept onto my face as I observed the eyes of the galactic fairy and the blue haired student _boggle, _clearly making the same connection I did.

Ranka continued, oblivious. "A-after all, they say you can't wage war on an empty stomach..." The younger Lee trailed off as she noticed the weird looks being directed at the buns, and glanced down. Instantly she slumped, a pink blush settling over her cheeks. I guess even at that young age they're sensitive to innuendo.

Sheryl then burst into a fit of giggles, which somehow infected Saotome. Those two were apparently more of a pair than I had initially guessed, arguing over the same crap and now laughing at the same joke. Still, the situation was defused for the time being, and I maintained my amused smile as Sheryl told Ranka just how 'definitely really cute' she was. The revelation didn't help Ranka's attitude much, and with an exhausted sigh she slumped even further.

Once Ranka had gotten over her funk (and Sheryl had managed to pull her dress up properly), the atmosphere in the room lightened somewhat. Sure, the air re-circulators hadn't kicked back in, but the air wasn't smelling off so we had a bit of time left before we started getting desperate. The usual protocol in these cases was to wait from someone to open the door from the outside, as there was no way for us to tell what was going on outside. That was a general rule though – if we ran out of air, we'd just open it up and try our luck. No one else had put two and two together about the recirculation yet though, so I didn't bring it up in order not to induce a panic.

Instead we split the steamed tuna buns, Saotome and I halving one bun while Sheryl and Ranka halved the other. I wasn't sure how I felt about the steamed tuna on the inside, as I preferred mine raw in sashimi cuts, but it was definitely palatable so I asked Ranka to pass my regards to the chef at her restaurant when she got the time. With the situation defused for the time being the girls and I relaxed as much as we could in the space available to us, while Saotome decided to try and use the terminal to get in contact with rescue forces.

"It's no good," he sighed as he killed the terminal. "The signal's not being restored."

Sheryl looked glumly at the ceiling. "It's hard to sit quietly while your fate is in someone else's hands," she said in tones of melancholy.

"You're right," I replied, "but when in situations like this you can teach yourself to trust your friends and colleagues to save you," I told her, a little crookedly. Her line struck a chord with my mentality; I made it a point to be control of my situation as often as humanly possibly, so my advice sounded hypocritical to my ears. On the flip side of the coin, the people in this shelter didn't have the extended survival abilities that I possessed, nor my practical experience – so it was more justified for them to be leaning on other people when they needed to.

"That's nice," the galactic fairy told me, "but I didn't get this far by relying on other people." I held my tongue, she possibly had a point and I wasn't going to call her on it and start another argument.

"Speaking of people saving us, I wonder how everyone at S.M.S. is going," Ranka said quietly. I opened my mouth to reassure her, but Saotome beat me to the punch.

"You know some of them?" he asked her in a voice drained of his usual fire. I honestly wondered for a second how the simple situational humour of the steamed tuna buns had diffused everyone's anger so effectively, but I supposed the result was there, so why bother caring about the how.

"Yeah," she confirmed for him. "My brother works in human resources, and I go there sometimes to bring them snacks."

"S.M.S. huh?" Saotome mused, his eyes glazing over for a second. When he shook himself out of his reverie he gave me a look.

"Is there anything you can do to get me in?" he asked plaintively. I shrugged.

"I could put a word in with the Squad Commander, but we're short on VF-25's in any case," I told him, and it was mostly the truth. I had an inkling that Ozma wanted to bring him on board anyway if only to prevent him from getting mixed up the real military, and if I judged the blue haired student's character correctly, that's where he'd run if we turned him down. He'd already been approached once, after all. Still, that didn't mean he was prepared for life as a combat pilot.

"The question is," I told him, "_why_ do you want to be a combat pilot?"

Saotome took a second or two to organise his reply, by which time Sheryl had already cut in over the top of him.

"Hey, is it just me," she began, "or is it getting stuffy in here?"

_Damnit_. Well, it looks like that cat would be out of the bag soon.

"Don't mess about," Saotome said, the dismissal in his tone threaded with a small amount of anger at having been spoken over.

"No, I'm serious," she replied, but got no further as the shelter was jarred by some external force. The four of us were thrown about, with Saotome only managing to keep his feet thanks to a desperate grab for the terminal. The lights cut out again to be replaced with the red emergency lighting, but this time the normal lighting didn't re-engage after a few seconds. Saotome swung back up to the terminal and brought up the shelter information. The despondent click of his tongue said all it, but he told us told the details anyway.

"Damn, the circulation system is down! At this rate we won't last another fifteen minutes." The intensity of his voice had risen a couple of levels, and I thought a detected a small measure of panic in there.

"Well don't just stand there, do something about it!" the galactic fairy demanded, her voice rising as well. If dropping my face into my palm would have improved the situation I would have no doubt done so at that point in time. Now that our lost air supply was common knowledge to the other three occupants of the shelter, they were beginning to panic, just as I thought. Fifteen minutes was still plenty of time for the rescuers to arrive, and in the worst case scenario we could still take our chances and get out if the park was pressurised.

"I would if I could," the blue haired student shot back, and I couldn't help but think I'd seen this kind of bickering before, about, oh, five minutes ago. Ranka mumbled something I didn't catch, but Sheryl took the stage next to her, rising regally before us. Even in the ruddy glow, it was easy to tell why she had such a large fanbase with the young male demographic; the woman was _beau__tiful._ At least when she wanted to be, I reminded myself. With a look of determination on her face that could only have been rivalled by Rin, she evenly told Saotome; "You've got to be kidding me."

And with that, she pivoted on one foot and strode purposefully towards exit ladder.

"Stop, you idiot!" Saotome exclaimed, clearly not awestruck by her celebrity charisma. "It's vacuum out there!"

I snorted as Sheryl started playing with the door controls. "All security shelter entrances are interlocked with redundant pressure gauges. They won't open unless it's pressurised outside," I told Saotome. I was surprised he didn't know that, but civilian evacuation drilling always involved not heading outside until allowed so by the military, so maybe that's why he was worried about opening the door.

"Thank you Shirou," the strawberry blonde songstress said to me as she continued messing with the door controls. "I'm not giving up and waiting to suffocate, no way!" she continued, obviously feeling as though she was on a roll. "People say I'm lucky, but I've worked hard by myself to get to where I am now! That's how I can be Sheryl Nome!"

Okay, she'd gone beyond the inspirational now. Sheryl was definitely monologuing. Not that I disagreed with her philosophy at all, it was very similar to my beliefs as a child and somewhat similar to the beliefs I carried now, but her training as a celebrity had kicked in and she was playing to the crowd now. Ranka was lapping it up, but Saotome wasn't buying it.

"That's how you take fate into your own hands!"

At that point I put a hand on her shoulder and put a decent amount of weight on it to keep her from the ladder. "If you're committed to this, I'm going first. We don't know what it's like outside, and I'm the best person in here to deal with unknown situations," I told her quietly. Sheryl nodded regally, no doubt thinking she'd inspired me with her speech. In reality, it was simply my job. Most lives saved. "Very well," I was told.

With that, I opened myself to my magic circuits and swung up the ladder towards the exit. It slid open as I approached and my field of view was obscured by the upper bodies of two women in hazard suits. Tellingly, their helmets were off, indicating the danger was most likely over.

I threw on a smile.

"Good afternoon ladies, how can I help you?"

* * *

It turned out that one of the ladies was a certain Grace O'Connor; Sheryl's manager. After I'd clambered out of the shelter, the galactic fairy was the next person out, and she favoured Grace with a quick hug, which was warmly returned. Even as Saotome and Ranka were extracting themselves from the hole we'd shared for all of twenty minutes, the middle-aged manager was busy organising transport for the herself and the diva back to their hotel, the spitting image of efficiency. She thanked us all warmly (and oddly enough, personally) for looking after Sheryl during the 'crisis'.

We barely had more than a few seconds to chat before an unassuming black car pulled up on the road behind us, and we ambled over quietly. Grace appeared busy on her phone pretty much the entire time, no doubt busy confirming security and whatnot for their ride back to the hotel. A pity really, I wanted a chance to ask her about the Vajra and check her response. As Sheryl's manager, if the Vajra were somehow attracted by the concert, there was a possibility she might know something about them, after all.

So instead of talking to Grace, I introduced myself to Second Lieutenant Catherine Glass, the N.U.N.S. liaison to Sheryl for the duration of her stay on Frontier and the other woman who had greeted me from out of the shelter. Well, I thought I was making an introduction, but I had an inkling we'd already met each other.

"You wouldn't happen to be the daughter of President Glass would you?" I asked the young woman after the traditional pleasantries were finished.

"I am," she responded guardedly, probably aware that simply being who she was made her a target to people that didn't agree with her father and his methods.

"I thought so," I said amicably. I _had_ met this woman before; I effectively 'babysat' her for a fortnight when she was only two years old – she was so young there'd be no way she'd remember me. There was also no point in reminding her about it – she'd go to her parents (just her father now, I guess) and get it confirmed, which would lead to her asking questions about my age... It would just be a huge mess if I were to open my mouth right now.

"You know my father?" she asked me curiously.

"Everyone knows your father," I told her with a fake chuckle.

Our conversation was cut off as Sheryl opened the car door then spun around to address us. "Listen up," she said, then paused for effect. "If I happen to find that visual data on the net, I'll destroy your lives, first socially, then biologically." Her raised index finger and the fact she alternated between glaring at Saotome and myself during that little tirade made it blatantly clear who those words were for. I kept a perfectly straight face, although Saotome took it upon himself to shoot her a withering glance.

With a grin, the songstress stepped into the car. As she leant out to shut the door, she paused in just the right spot to expose as much cleavage as possible to Saotome.

"Although," she purred, "if you want to use it as a memory just for tonight, I'll allow it," she finished up, demurely letting a hand rest over the folds of her recently donned jacket. How on earth Saotome could fall _again_ for one of her obvious attempts to bait him was beyond me, but sure enough I caught a flash of a satisfied grin roll across Sheryl's face as Saotome (and Ranka too, at the implied innuendo I guess) colour red and recoil.

The grin was replaced with a condescending giggle. "As if I'd allow that, idiot," she sniffed in disdain. As Saotome opened his mouth to deliver what would not doubt be a witless, belligerent response, I eyed askance across the car at Grace. She caught my look and offered me a distracted half embarrassed, half apologetic smile as way of a reply, all the while chatting on a cell phone. Idly I began wondering how deep I needed to look into Sheryl's support staff.

Saotome had barely finished what he no doubt thought was an intimidating and drawn out "What?" when Sheryl seized back the initiative with ease, calling Ranka over to the car. The green haired girl (who I was now beginning to suspect was at least some part zentran – she didn't have the ears, but her hair responded to her emotions like a meltran's does), looked shocked for a second, but quickly scurried over to the car door. I suppressed a snort as she almost tripped over Saotome, who wound down rather quickly now that he wasn't being expertly baited.

"Do you like singing?" Sheryl asked Ranka, all tones of teasing dropped from her voice.

"Y-yeah!" Ranka replied enthusiastically. Sheryl smiled.

"Then you should be more honest with yourself," Sheryl confided to the younger girl, "there's always chances right in front of your eyes if you look."

That was actually a useful bit of advice, and handing it out ran in opposite directions to the opinion I had formed of Sheryl during our twenty minutes of captivity at the bottom of that emergency shelter. A thump from the car let me know that Grace was now occupying the drivers seat. Sheryl glanced away from Ranka to confirm that for herself, before turning back.

"I almost _never_ give anyone a service like this," Sheryl told the green haired girl with a wink and a smile. Looks like I'd have to dig deeper on Sheryl – she was clearly not the one-dimensional idol I was expecting. On top of that, I still needed to determine if Grace or any of her staff knew anything about the Vajra.

I sighed as the door shut with a thump and a click, then watched as the car rumbled off. If only I had the presence of mind to have some trackers on me! I could have planted one in Sheryl's coat and found out where they were staying, which would save me a lot of leg work in the future. Still, maybe if I kept tabs on Saotome the galactic fairy would show up again. To that end, I resolved to obtain some electronic bugs for that purpose.

A creak of polymer suit on concrete brought my attention back from future plans. Ranka, Saotome and myself turned to face Lieutenant Glass, who seemed to use the movement as a way to get our attention.

"Quite the leisurely rescue," Saotome commented flatly, sarcasm dripping off his voice. The Lieutenant's phone began to chime, but she ignored it in favour of actually _replying_ to Saotome's snide remark.

"On that matter, we apologise," Lieutenant Glass replied, clearly just rolling out platitudes on behalf of the N.U.N.S. "If we had've know the air recirculators were down -"

I waved her down. "Don't worry about that, get your phone."

To be honest, I was half expecting Saotome to launch into a tirade against me, but he obviously wasn't in the mood to hear meaningless excuses either. The Lieutenant herself wasted no time, quickly bringing her military issue phone to her ear.

"Yes, I'm finished here."

Lieutenant Glass must have been getting a report from higher up in the command tree. I was kind of hoping she'd hurry up with that, because we still had to be formally discharged from this area and I wanted to get back to the Quarter to help out with the after action detail.

"What?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch just a little. "Lieutenant Commander Ozma Lee has been injured?"

Oh. Oh. _Damn_. I really hope Ranka wasn't paying attention just then.

"Eh?" The girl uttered in response to my unspoken pleas. Given what Ozma told me earlier, I was fairly certain this wasn't going to easy on the young girl. I turned to put a calming hand on Ranka's shoulder to keep her under control, but movement in the field of stars beyond the patched dome caught my attention. Ranka followed my eyes with her worried ones, trying to discern what it was I was looking at, possibly to distract her from thinking about what Lieutenant Glass had said earlier.

That wasn't going to be the best idea for the young Lee. What I was currently looking at were two variable fighters, one green, one blue, both in battloid configuration. Between them, being carried along by two pairs of manipulator arms was a grey VF-25S, upside-down relative to the battloids. As the trio of variable fighters passed ahead I could easily make out the Squad Commander unconscious in a cockpit filled with spheres of blood. I hadn't bothered Reinforcing my eyes, but I got the feeling that if I did I'd probably even be able to make out the wounds on his body.

I maintained a neutral expression as the Messiahs silently passed us by to land. It was definitely not a pleasant sight to be watching, but there was nothing I could do about it.

"Ozma," breathed Lieutenant Glass vehemently. I glanced at her and was surprised to see the look of utter shock on her face – maybe she knew the Squad Commander from his days in the N.U.N.S.

Her reaction was easily trumped by Ranka's a bare second later. A shrill scream erupted behind me, and I spun around in time to see Ranka shakily pull her hands away from her mouth. Ranka's pale white face followed the path of the variable fighters above us. It had been a long time since I'd seen the kind of utter devastation that the young girl's body language was conveying. As Mikhail and Luca passed beyond our field of vision, the green haired girl broke into a stumbling run to keep them in sight, eventually colliding with the dome. She barely seemed to notice. With tears in her eyes, she simply righted herself and started to yell futilely at the docking fighters.

"Brother! Why are you hurt?"

I watched on. Lieutenant Glass tried to cut in, tried to ask if Ranka was actually related to the Squad Commander, but Ranka wasn't paying any attention whatsoever, so Lieutenant Glass let the words die in the air.

"You said you'd stop piloting! You said you'd never leave me alone!"

On some unspoken agreement, Saotome and I moved up towards the stricken girl as she let herself slide down the carbon-glass, leaving a trail of sweat and tears where her forehead was in contact with the dome.

"You said you'd stop doing dangerous stuff," she cried, her voice losing it's volume. "You can't die, you just can't..." the poor girl moaned piteously. Saotome and I had just about reached her by that time, and I finally got around to putting that hand on her shoulder. Saotome echoed the gesture on her other shoulder, but we were both ignored. Something serious had dislodged in her mind; something so serious that we couldn't help her with it right now. Her back heaved as tears streamed down her face and she buried her head in her heads, completely blocking us out.

"Why?" she asked, her voice heaving with thickened emotion. "Why would you do such a thing! I haven't told anyone that secret!" The green haired girl had regained her voice by now; she practically screamed that last line. Still...

_Secret?_ What secret? What was Ranka talking about? Whatever it was, now that Ranka knew that Ozma was piloting, I was going to make damn sure he told me everything.

"So... no..." she sobbed, losing her voice again. Saotome had began to rub her back soothingly, and with a start I realised I had completely forgotten there was a distressed girl right in front of me.

Maybe Saotome wasn't the only one with empathy issues.

I had barely finished that bitter thought when Ranka screamed and with a spasm flung herself violently backwards. Saotome easily caught her as she went over backwards and I met his eyes. Shock and worry lined them. I wondered what he saw when he saw mine.

* * *

I found it mildly ironic that after leaving the park in such a mess of chaos and confusion, I found myself back there six hours later casually sipping on a sports drink I'd purchased from an overly friendly vending machine. (One of the few advances of mankind that I was certain I'd never get used to were AI controlled vending machines on _wheels._) It was a glorious night beyond the viewing dome – with the artificial light from the external shell cut in order to simulate night, there was very little light pollution to obscure the stars. Perhaps the only blemish was a cloudy patch where carbon-glass combined with self repairing gel had combined to seal the hole punched in the dome earlier.

I inhaled the cool night air, reflecting on events earlier in the day. The aftermath of the operation was incredibly chaotic, but eventually Lieutenant Glass and her N.U.N.S. escorts managed to get Ranka to the closest hospital, the Starlight Hill. It was a private hospital that I knew from my S.M.S. briefings as being associated with us – we'd pay them a yearly sum and they'd allow us access to their medical equipment and a few rooms. The upshot of that was that I knew Ranka would be in good hands.

Saotome had wandered off after them, and with the excitement over in the park I double timed it back to Quarter. I made it back in time to watch an unconscious Ozma fly past on a crash tray out the hangar door, with Canaria hanging over his shoulder. There wasn't much else to do at that point, except help the ground crews finish up in the hangar area, which I did until Robbs told me I'd done enough, and shooed me out of the hangar. I made my way back to my room, quickly scrawled the code "IFT-4088 x5 +display" onto a piece of paper, slipped it into my pocket and made my way out to the park.

Movement flared in my peripheral vision, and I brought my eyes around to the path. Two figures were ambling up the path, both dressed in S.M.S. jackets; one was a micronised Nene Rora, her height serving as the perfect contrast to her Squad Commander, Klan Klan. When she was macronised, Klan was a fairly average late teenage meltran, sitting somewhere around thirteen metres high with electric blue hair and deep green eyes. Due to some quirk of genetics however, when she was micronised, well, she flat out looked as though she was barely ten years old.

This made her a perfect target for mockery by Mikhail, who I was assured by Luca only did it because him and Klan had all but grown up together. The rest of S.M.S. mostly had the good grace to avoid such behaviour, but on one occasion I had caught Bobby trying to chase her down with an armful of dresses while crooning "But you're so cuuuuuuuuuute!" in that curious voice of his.

"Klan, Nene," I greeted them with a nod as they closed in on my seat, omitting Klan's rank as was typically the case for S.M.S. employees when off duty. I must admit, the flexibility and informality of the company was really beginning to grow on me.

"Shirou," the blue haired meltran replied, giving me a nod in reply – a gesture which was echoed by Nene. The pair stopped in front of the seat I was on so I dutifully shuffled aside a bit and swept my hand in the general direction of the free space, offering them some space on the seat. Klan shook her head with an exasperated sigh.

"We can't hang around," she explained. "The management at O'Malley's just rang to let us know that Ramaria has passed out in the corner." The undersized meltran rolled her eyes theatrically. "_Again.__"_

I raised my eyebrow slightly. I'd only run into Ramaria a couple of times, but on reflection, just about every time I'd run into her she was either drinking, hungover or on duty. If I found her drinking once or twice, I'd be willing to chalk it up to coincidence. It then dawned on me that there could be some underlying reason that was drinking the red haired meltran to consume that heavily.

"She seems to be pretty involved with the alcohol," I commented neutrally. Klan gave me a shrewd glance in reply (well, about as shrewd as her face could pull off – the actual effect reminded me of a cat giving a person a curious stare).

"She has her moments," Klan told me, perhaps a touch defensively. I glanced past her towards Nene, but she was following the lead of her Squad Leader (or onee-sama) and didn't give away any information. I shrugged, feeling that perhaps it was perhaps something to follow up another time.

"Do you need a hand carrying her back?" I asked. Offering my help cost me nothing whatsoever, and would save Nene from having to struggle by herself with unconscious meltran dead weight on the way back to Quarter, because let's face it, Klan wasn't going to be of much help carrying Ramaria back when she was micronised. I got another long glance from the meltran (perhaps she was wondering whether I was going to try dig into Ramaria's character on the way or not), before she gave me a curt nod.

"We could probably use the help," she admitted shamelessly. "Also," she began with a cat-like grin, "it will give me a chance to assess your intentions towards my cute little Nene!"

I gave her good natured grin at the quick topic change. Nene herself flushed a little, protesting weakly at the underhanded poke at her.

"Go on ahead," I told the pair. "I'll just finish my drink and catch up."

Klan nodded and twisted on one foot, heading back up the path. Nene gave me one last quick glance before chasing after her 'onee-sama'. I took the time to finish my drink – there was barely more than two mouthfuls left in the can, so it didn't take long. When I was sure the meltran pair had travelled far enough down the path, I pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket and palmed it in between the slats of wood that composed the park bench I was sitting on. I grabbed my can and set it upright on the lip of a bin conveniently placed next to the seat, then took off at a brisk walk after the women.

"So, I heard you signed up to get whipped by Nene in the dojo," the blue haired meltran began cheerfully as I caught up to them. Nene had apparently told Klan of our agreed spar at some point in time, and the young blue haired meltran had of course taken that as some sort of serious challenge as opposed to a friendly match. Nene and I had to spend the entire journey to the bar and back again insisting that there was nothing confrontational about our planned exercise. Klan, being a young meltran, no doubt found the thought of a challenge between us in a somewhat romantic fashion, trying to sell us on the idea of the spar as being a symbolic clash for dominance between our squadrons.

I found the concept completely hilarious and thus politely maintained my ground, insisting steadfastly and without my reaction that it was simply a spar for exercise. In reality, I had little doubt about the outcome and was only interested in keeping my technique sharp. The short meltran had much more success needling Nene, who was keeping step with me as we dragged Ramaria between us. The pink haired Queadluun pilot was stuttering and blushing as she tried to maintain her ground in the face of the dogged onslaught of her Squad Commander. Klan used her social status of big sister and Squad Commander to good effect in her attempts to bully some sort of confession out of Nene, but the pink haired meltran held her ground somehow. (I got the feeling that her modesty was what saved her – Klan was definitely of the belief that Nene would knock me around the dojo and Nene probably didn't want to encourage that idea when she had no idea about my capabilities.)

As we passed back through the park, I noticed with some satisfaction that my sports drink can was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the walk home was made enjoyable enough by watching Klan rile up Nene, who I thought was getting disproportionately ruffled, and apart from the slightly justified sense of deja vu I had when helping Nene dump Ramaria in their room, nothing raised my heckles.

* * *

"So," I began, staring out a window overlooking a rather picturesque rose garden. "Can you tell me about Ranka now?"

"What's there to say?" Ozma asked me from his position on the hospital bed behind me. His gruff voice carried a hint of caution, and I found myself wondering if he'd gotten around to reading the reports detailing what I had gotten involved with while he was chasing off aliens.

"That's rhetorical right?" I asked him with a snort. "I was there Ozma. I _saw_ Ranka break down when she saw you injured in the cockpit," I coldly told the man, as I spun around to face him. The hospital room was sterile, as such rooms usually are. I should know, I'd seen more than my fair share in my life.

Ozma met my gaze, the defiance I expected to see projected by blue eyes framed with a furrowed brow.

"We'll never be a professional team if you can't trust me. If you can't trust _us_," I reminded the defiant Squad Commander in a whisper. It was just the two of us in the room, and I pitched my voice in such a way as to appeal to Ozma's sense of squad solidarity. I'd also hoped that reminding him about Mikhail and Luca would build my case in this regard.

He held my gaze for a good ten seconds, but finally relented.

"You're right," he exhaled, leaning back in the hospital bed. I suppressed a hypocritical grimace; for all my talk of trust, all my rhetoric, to my ears it sounded hollow – there was a core of truth there, but I half felt like I was just making a play to get the desired result.

"I'm not really Ranka's brother," he told me in a soft voice. I didn't let the jolt of surprise that ran through me show on my face, but I was most _definitely_ surprised. If he wasn't really Ranka's brother, he must have built some deep emotional bonds one way or another to trigger a reaction like the one she had last night.

"We're both survivors of the 117th Expeditionary Fleet," he explained in the same soft voice. I narrowed my eyes and nodded, instantly recognising the fleet that had met it's end during the first large scale conflict with the Vajra.

"I was a rookie, just out of the academy. It was supposed to be a routine deployment for pilots like me – a low risk deployment to ease us into the life and duties of a military pilot."

I nodded, indicating that I didn't have any questions yet, but my mind was racing. This meant that both Ranka and Ozma had links to previous Vajra incursions. I quickly dismissed the idea that Ozma was deliberately hiding this information from me in particular – it was clear that this action composed the classified section of his personnel file. That would seemingly imply that if Ozma was involved with the Vajra on a deeper level than a shells and missiles solution, he was most likely not aware of it; someone high enough in the command chain to classify the action would be.

"I was a worthless pilot, and we were outclassed in our old birds," he told me. "I was disabled quickly – my main engines were taken out from underneath me. I drifted in space with my distress beacon on while the main fleet burned behind me. There was nothing I could do."

This was a different side to the confident and headstrong pilot I had come to know in the past few weeks. It was easy to tell he had secrets, but I had no idea they ran this deep.

"I picked up the signal of an escape pod and used my vector thrusters to close in on it," Ozma continued. "I opened communications, but the only reply I got was an automated video signal showing the inside of the pod."

I continued to listen to the story in incredulous silence. I was certain there were no official records or survivors from that fleet, so either Ozma was feeding me a line of crap or someone was going to a _lot_ of effort to cover up for Ranka and Ozma. On top of that, I got the niggling feeling that I was missing something.

"Ranka was sitting there in the pod, almost catatonic. She wouldn't respond at all. It was clear she was taking it a lot worse than me – whatever family she had was nothing more than dust now. I had to help. When we were picked up by a rescue ship, I told them she was my sister. It was clear no-one believed me, but surprisingly the commander of the ship didn't care. Perhaps he thought I would be better than dumping her into an orphanage." The grey haired pilot paused for a moment. "The details were covered up in black ink and suddenly I had a new sister."

By now I was definitely showing my disbelief on my face with an open mouth – even if only half this story was true, this story spoke volumes of Ozma's character. I'd need to verify it as much as possible, but all of a sudden I began to see my Squad Commander in a new light, past the grizzled old bastard front he usually put on for us. It also went some way to explaining his displays of concern for the members of his company.

"She lost her voice for a while and bottled her memories away. But we somehow developed a fairly normal relationship over time. One day I came back from a combat patrol with a nasty concussion – I'd bet what she did then was pretty similar to what you saw yesterday. That's when I knew I had to stop piloting, but I couldn't protect her if I wasn't in the cockpit."

"Which is why she wasn't supposed to know you were still piloting," I finished for him. Ozma nodded. I let out a sigh and collapsed back against the window.

"I'm sorry for doubting you Ozma," I told the grey haired pilot. I was surprised to find myself sincerely meaning it. I had seen with my own eyes the trust Ranka had in her older brother, and none of that could have been faked. That meant Ozma was being incredibly modest when he said they'd somehow developed 'a fairly normal relationship' – the love and trust required to build what they had was phenomenal, easily on the same level that had allowed Rin and I to succeed in the Grail War and in London.

Far more than I had left in me, I felt certain.

"It's okay," the Squad Commander told me sheepishly. "It's kind of good to tell someone," he confided. "And besides, you're right. I do need to trust you guys more, so, uh, thanks for pulling my head out of my arse."

I waved off Ozma's uncomfortable attempt at thanks. "Don't try for modesty Ozma, you just can't do it well," I said, injecting an upward lilt into my tone. Ozma's face relaxed to its usual self-sure grin and he snorted in reply. A comfortably easy silence settled on the room. I checked my watch and turned back to the window. Out in the garden I spotted a chair with an old fashioned bound book lying unattended on a bench and felt a surge of satisfaction flow through me.

"I have a question," I told Ozma, turning away from the window again. "Just before Ranka had her episode, she mentioned she hadn't told anyone about 'that secret'. Do you know anything about that?"

Ozma looked me square in the eye. No fidgeting or dancing eyes. "I don't, sorry."

I believed him.

"Oh, one last thing," I told Ozma. "Saotome wanted me to put a good word in with you. I can't really say much for his personality, but after what he got us through yesterday, he's a skilled and confident pilot."

The Squad Commander gave me a pained look. I was saying what we both knew and Ozma probably didn't want to hear – Saotome was a good pilot, despite his personality issues. And a good private military company always required good pilots. Who knows, maybe Saotome's character was even helping his case. Given what I had just learned about Ozma, maybe he might even want to try to prevent the kid from getting suckered into the N.U.N.S., where he wouldn't be treated nearly as well as he would with us. Either way, I had gotten Ozma thinking where he hadn't been before.

For a second, I felt kind of bad. The feeling passed.

"We do have Gilliam's old bird coming back from L.A.I. soon," he mused, before deigning to notice me again. "Thanks for ruining my recovery Shirou," he said without bite. I flashed him a grin, the kind of grin that let him know I was enjoying his acting.

"Well Squad Commander," I began, dropping back into my mask of casual indifference, "it's been fun, and thanks for clearing that up for me. I've got some errands to run before I get back to the Quarter, so I'll catch you later."

In a reversal of roles, it was now my time to wave over my shoulder before completing my goodbyes.

I ambled along the corridors on the fourth floor of the hospital, making my way towards the elevators. Suddenly it hit me. The Vajra had left Ozma and Ranka alone on their escape, but the rest of the fleet was destroyed. Were the Vajra looking for something in the 117th Expeditionary Fleet? The only two things that currently linked the Vajra to the Frontier fleet were Ranka and Ozma, and he had reason enough to hate the Vajra.

The fact that Ranka could be a threat to humanity was something that didn't sit well with me, especially after I'd gotten to know her somewhat. I'd really hate to have to kill her.

Still, that was just conjecture at this point, and admittedly, she was but one person in a sea of possibilities. Idly, I wondered what that secret was, the one Ranka mentioned but Ozma had no clue about. Maybe it was a fragment of her hidden memories, a silly childhood promise made to someone just before she went through her own personal hell.

I entered the large landing overlooking the main entrance of the hospital, rolling that thought through my head. Several floors below me I spotted Mikhail and Luca in their school uniforms, leading a grumpy looking Saotome towards the elevators.

I let my eyes linger on the trio for a moment, before taking the stairs down. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with them at the moment.

* * *

Author's notes:

_Well, that was another fairly large chapter, which unfortunately seemed to be mostly expositionary in nature. Personally I tend to enjoy writing the action because I think I can write it better than doing purely character work, but eh, if I was doing all action and no story I'd be writing a Quake fanfic or something :p I had originally planned to put in another scene, but got to the end and decided to throw it into the next chapter, and to be honest the more I was pushing to get the next scene out, the more I thought it would probably fit better with the flow a bit later._

_The big surprise for me was how long it took to narrate the emergency shelter scene for Shirou's point of view. In hindsight it became a fairly handy way for Shirou to get a better grip on Alto's character and introduce him to the galactic fairy herself, plus I got a chance to play some anatomy humour, so that's always a win in my book._

_I'm enjoying expanding the role of the Pixie squadron characters and writing more life into them than they received in the series, with the obvious exception of Klan. People who are familiar with Macross Frontier might find it odd, but Ramaria and Nene are pretty much blank slates character-wise, which lets me fill them up how I see fit. It's also nice to use them to be able to write your main character into a situation which doesn't require constant head-butting or snarking (ala: Alto. The more I write him and Shirou, the more I'm sure Shirou sees him as a stupid clown whose reaction to any sort of authority involves kicking and screaming)_

_For the future I'm planning to dabble a bit deeper in the Nasuverse, which will require a bit of research. Hell, I own the FS/N game and I'm fairly sure my understand of canon and characterisation from FS/N is fairly horrible, so it's going to probably involve a lot of research! Bear with me :p_

_On a final note, I'd like to thank everyone who's put their two cents in the review box. There's a lot of useful feedback and encouraging comments in there, thanks heaps!_


	5. Forgotten Piece

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 5: Forgotten Piece.

* * *

After leaving Ozma to deal with the three kids in the hospital proper, I had lingered in the gardens for a while. The book I had spotted from Ozma's room was still sitting on a bench overlooking the white curves of the hospital. I picked the book up, scanned the cover (_Flying Fast and Fast Women: An Autobiography of Isamu Dyson_) with a feigned curiosity for any onlookers, then sat down and flipped quickly through the pages, in the manner of a person looking for an interesting passage in some otherwise uninteresting prose. Sure enough, in keeping with the system previously worked out between my contact and myself, there was a folded bookmark on page twenty five which I casually slipped into my jacket pocket.

I allowed myself to continue thumbing through the book, occasionally stopping to read a semi-interesting passage or two. Truth be told, there weren't many. Having met the author once before, it confirmed for me an idle estimate of his grasp on language I had made almost twenty years ago. Within ten minutes I had put the book back down with a disinterested look on my face and stood up. I Reinforced my eyes to take a look at the window of Ozma's room, but all I could see from this angle was Saotome in the window, his effeminate face tightened in outrage and his mouth moving at a rapid pace.

I really wasn't at all surprised to see that.

Mentally wishing Ozma the best of luck, I strolled out of the gardens and made my way back towards the Quarter. I quickly made my way back to my room in the barracks, nodding in greeting to the staff I met on my way past. Once I'd ensconced myself safely in my room, I pulled the bookmark out of my pocket and unfolded it. A series of numbers were typed carefully on the paper, indicating a date (six days from now), time in standard twenty four hour time, and a location based on standard military grid coordinates for Island One.

* * *

Two days later I was sitting down to breakfast in the mess hall when who should I spy looking lost with a tray, but none other than Saotome Alto. In itself, this wasn't a huge surprise for me – last night Ozma had let me know the young blue haired kid would be joining our little band over a game of pool (which I lost – despite my ability to calculate angles and velocities nearly instantaneously in combat, I could never seem to transfer that skill into peacetime pursuits). What did surprise me was that he was _here_, as I was under the impression he already was living in a house somewhere nearby. His eyes danced about the mess hall, trying to find either a spare seat or someone he knew. A flash of pride shot through me. No doubt Ozma had made sure to impress upon the kid the danger of our occupation in a last attempt to talk him out of our path, but still Saotome stood up to accept the challenge (and the job).

Well, he was part of us now, and I supposed that meant I'd have to bite the bullet. I raised a hand and he looked around, catching the motion. I met his eyes and gave him a smile. He met my eyes and gave me a scowl.

What an ungrateful little brat.

Saotome made one last look around but couldn't seem to find somewhere else to sit, so carrying his tray of cereal he picked his way through the seats and slid into the seat opposite me.

"Why the long face?" I asked him. The scowl was mostly gone by now, replaced instead with an air of suppressed superiority.

"I was hoping there'd be someone else out here that I'd know apart from you," he told me as he arranged his dishes on the tray.

"I'm honestly not that bad once you get to know me," I replied with a lazy grin. I doubted he'd ever truly know me, but it was still the truth.

"What, once I work through your mask?" he queried as he pushed some cereal around on his plate. My outward smile didn't slip, but he had a point. Even if he'd never truly know me, he already seemed to know that it probably wasn't going to happen, which is more than I could say for everyone else in S.M.S. How _did_ he pick that?

"Well, some people would argue that the journey itself is more fun than reaching the destination," I replied lightly, blowing aside his insightful remarks with forced levity. "Congratulations on joining S.M.S. by the way," I continued calmly, trying to offer him an olive branch and simmer the conversation down a little bit. If that meant I had to stuff my pride down my mouth for a while, then so be it. I offered my hand across the table – the western form of greeting having supplanted other traditions in the aftermath of Space War 1.

Saotome sighed and shrugged off his aura of superiority as he took my hand. "Thanks," he said with a small rueful smile. "Sorry about the way I've been acting," he said ruefully, accepting . "I've been under a bit of... well, pressure, recently."

One of my eyebrows arched a little. I was willing to give him that, but a lot of the time I'd seen him 'under pressure' had been direct results of someone provoking him. Considering how easy it appeared to be to provoke him, well, let's just say I took that excuse with a grain of salt. Saotome reacted to my raised eyebrow by ignoring it in favour of his breakfast, perhaps sensing that it was justified.

"So what's your story?" I enquired casually as Saotome started spooning down his breakfast. Now was probably the time to actually start caring about him a little, especially if he was going to be watching my back while in the cockpit. "Have you come up with a reason for wanting to join us?"

"He's just running away from home," came a voice from over my shoulder. I turned around and saw Mikhail shoot Saotome a winning grin. The smaller form of Luca was flanking the sniper and was smiling in genuine happiness, as opposed to to Mikhail's almost predatory grin. "I told the princess that all he'd do here would get himself killed," Mikhail said to me, in a whisper that was designed to be heard by half the room, "and yet here he is. I don't know how stupid you can get."

Watching Saotome's face during that little aside was priceless – he went immediately sullen when Mikhail starting talking, then his eyes tightened as Mikhail started whispering. By the time Mikhail was finished, Saotome was utterly _livid_ and punctuated his emotions by slamming the table with a closed fist.

"Mikhail! You-" The blue haired boy began threateningly, but Mikhail paid about as much attention to that outburst as he might a passing bird – interesting for sure, but nothing to get worked up about. Luca on the other hand looked somewhat resigned. No doubt he had seen it all at his school, and Mikhail's teasing of Saotome was something he just accepted as normal these days.

Mikhail cut off Saotome's burst by sitting down with a clatter next to me, forcing Luca to loop around a couple of tables to grab the seat next to Saotome. The blue haired kid glowered in anger and looked set to continue his tirade, but thought the better of it after a quick glance around the mess hall (being surrounded by some fairly burly men who would back up your opponent in a fight tends to have that effect on most people's decision making efforts).

"So anyway," the pointy eared sniper began, "Princess Alto here used to be a-" At which point I gave Mikhail a _very_ even look. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Luca's smile morph into a look of disapproval – possibly the first time I'd seen an outright negative emotion cross his features.

"Mikhail," I interrupted, allowing a touch of a threat into my tone, "If Saotome decides to tell me, then it's his place to – not yours. I asked _him_, after all." Mikhail must have realised he crossed a line somewhere and a suitably sheepish look crossed his features as he busied himself with his toast. The anger ebbed from Saotome as well, and the kid gave me an appraising look for for a second or two, to which I responded with the same smile I was wearing earlier.

Looks like I scored some points with Saotome for the time being. It _almost_ made me feel bad that the first thing I'd be doing when I got off duty in the afternoon was scour the net for everything I could find about him. I was somewhat surprised that I didn't feel a surge of guilt over the hypocrisy, but the end result was that I'd get the info I wanted and begin to earn his respect more efficiently than if I had have simply let Mikhail run his mouth.

"So, getting back to the topic – what's your story?" I asked Saotome.

Saotome finished a spoon of cereal and gave me a shrug. "I'm in the same class as Mikhail at school," he told me, his voice short but not offended. That allowed me to infer he went to the same school as Luca too. "Mihoshi Academy, flight class, second year."

I nodded and allowed myself to continue prodding him. "Have you come up with a reason why you want to pilot with us?" From my experience, it was rare from him to maintain a cool head for this long, and I was interested in finding out what I could about him without getting involved in a shouting match (which is what our previous interactions had a tendency to degenerate into, or at least so it felt to me). Around me Mikhail and Luca were busying wolfing down their breakfasts and not paying too much attention to what I'd asked. That was unusual for both of them I thought, given Luca's inquisitive nature and Mikhail's well concealed curiosity. Perhaps they already knew how he would answer.

"I want to fly," Saotome said with absolute conviction. I leaned back on my chair casually.

_He wants to fly!_ I'd heard a lot of stupid reasons for joining the military in my time, but that one had to take the cake.

"Can't you do that at school?" I pointed out, not letting any of my derision show. It was a tough task, believe me. At that moment in time all I really wanted to do was throw back my head and laugh, something I hadn't done in a long, long time.

Saotome shook his head. "The sky in here isn't a real sky," he muttered into his last spoonful of cereal, his voice sitting somewhere between despondency and disgust. From his side, Luca giggled.

"Alto-sempai has always wanted to fly in a real sky," he confirmed for me enthusiastically. "That's what he said when he joined our club too!" I considered chewing Luca out for doing Saotome's talking for him, but unlike Mikhail's earlier comments, this interjection simply wasn't aimed to make the blue haired boy feel uncomfortable, but to simply confirm a fact.

In any case, it was a stretch of even my jaded imagination to imagine Luca could possibly be involved with putting another person down – his aura of natural inquisition made him come off as a slightly out of touch kid full of good intentions.

Although I felt Saotome was being melodramatic with his earlier declaration, he kind of had a point. At it's apex, the dome surrounding Island One was barely two hundred metres high, which was fine for EX-gear flights, but there was no way you could feel the real thrill of being kilometres high in an atmosphere in a bio-plant colony ship. Likewise, in space there wasn't the constant hook of gravity and the unpredictability of an atmosphere to challenge the aerodynamics of the variable fighter, and as a result working in space could feel somehow flat in comparison.

Still. "Surely you could find a safer way to do that though?" I asked, needling him further.

"Well, I probably could if I looked hard enough," Saotome responded, conceding the point. "But after flying the VF-25, I don't think I want to be in another craft."

Now _that_ was a reason I could sort of get behind. The Messiah was an unbelievably good variable fighter, the best in active deployment right now. In terms of pure flying exhilaration, there was no better ride that I knew about, and I had sat in the cockpit of a _lot_ of variable fighters over the years. It still didn't answer the question of what he has to fight for though, but after prodding him about it nearly every time I met him and having gotten no decent answer, I was willing to just put it down to the basic human attraction to blow something up. Alaya knows that I've suffered from that more than once.

"Well, that's one thing we agree on," Mikhail said in his cool voice. "Just don't get me killed with your reckless attitude."

Saotome's eye's tightened in anger, but let the comment slip as he finished his cereal. Mikhail obviously couldn't resist getting another shot in, but in this case it was somewhat validated – if Saotome allowed himself to be as easily goaded in combat as he was socially, the minute he went out of our influence (by going too far to maintain communication for example), he would likely find himself over his head.

"You should be more concerned that your own flying doesn't get you killed," Saotome muttered, but there wasn't much spirit in the riposte.

Typical. The minute I think I fall into the trap of believing how predictable he is, the damn kid actually ignores an obvious attempt to bait him.

"What's on your schedule today Alto-sempai?" Luca must have seen some sort of signal pass between the two older kids that marked the end of any potential hostilities, and so moved to fill the gap in conversation.

"School mostly, but then an induction after that," Saotome replied, his tone becoming curious. "What's that involve anyway? It's an all evening affair."

"Emiya-san was the most recent person to go through that," Luca said thoughtfully, deflecting the question onto me with next to no effort. Three pairs of eyes turned to bore into me, and under such intense scrutiny I casually finished off my breakfast before bothering to reply.

"It's mostly paperwork and an info dump for you," I told the young boy casually. "The fun stuff starts tomorrow."

"What fun stuff?" I was asked, his curiosity well and truly piqued by now.

"Well, simulator training mostly, I would imagine." In truth, I wasn't one hundred percent sure what he would be getting up to, seeing as Ozma hadn't done up Saotome's training schedule, so I was making a fairly educated guess. To be fair, the kid was here to pilot, so the simulators made sense.

"Maybe some basic weapon and unarmed training as well, seeing as this is your first time in a military organisation," I hazarded, glancing at Mikhail and Luca for confirmation.

Luca nodded and picked up where I left off. "I had to do basic firearms and self defence when I first joined up," he confirmed. "Michel-sempai only had to do self defence though."

"Well, I was an ace sniper, even back then," Mikhail said with just enough of that touch of fake pride to play up to the aloofness he threw out to the rest of the world. I was beginning to know him well enough by now to realise it was a persona he used to isolate himself when he saw the need to. In the present company though, where he was aware we knew him well enough to see through that (Luca and Saotome from school), he was laying it on as a form of self depreciating humour.

"I'm sure you were," I said with an arched eyebrow. "Pity you seem to have lost those skills now." The banter left my mouth with a well natured grin – one that Mikhail returned.

"Would you like to go head to head sometime on a rifle range?" Mikhail asked me casually through the last bite of his toast.

I raised my hands palm open in the air. "No thanks, I don't like picking fights I can't win."

Luca giggled at the exchange. I took that moment to glance at the clock hanging in the corner of the mess hall – and realised it was time to get on duty. I excused myself from the table and made my way out the mess hall, sparing a glance towards the trio as I left. I was somewhat pleased to find them chatting normally, like the high school kids they were.

* * *

As the week progressed it became apparent that there wasn't much for us to do apart from bring Saotome up to par as a combat pilot. As I'd predicted, he was spending the vast majority of his time in the simulators, under the watchful gaze of Ozma, Mikhail and myself, depending on who drew the short straw on that particular day. Early on it became obvious that Saotome's natural skills far outstripped the standard simulator setting (and I was very glad about that – my slowly building reputation with Ozma would have taken a nose dive if I had recommended an average pilot), so Mikhail had taken it upon himself to sneak in while Saotome was attending a call of nature and increase the difficulty level.

I had been on the other side of the hangar when Luca tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow him to his VF-25, but rather than ask me a piloting or technical question like I'd been expecting, he pulled me just around the nose cone of his green bird, which gave a perfect view of the simulators. One in particular was shuddering and shaking about, almost at it's limits, a sure sign someone was in the process of being shot down inside. Standing directly outside, and with a smile on his face so wide I didn't need to reinforce my eyes to spot it, was Mikhail.

The reason Mikhail was wearing a Cheshire cat grin was made blatantly obvious when I did reinforce my eyes to read some of the signs he was holding. I couldn't understand the majority of them (for some reason each sign was written in a different language), but if they all had the same meaning as the ones I could read, then they basically read _'I'm dead.' _The simulator gave a final tortured groan before settling to the neutral position, and a very chastised looking Saotome stumbled out.

"Congratulations on your twenty fifth death!" Mikhail boomed as he slung the signs over Saotome's neck. The blue haired kid sighed despondently as a bunch of crew members wandered over to form a peanut gallery. I gave Luca a quick glance that spoke volumes and we wandered over to join the crowd. By the time we got there Saotome had recovered some of his spark and was telling Mikhail where to shove it in response to Mikhail ordering him to do twenty five laps of the hangar.

"And if you engage the power on your EX-gear I'll double it!"

Ouch. A full military EX-gear like the one Saotome was wearing was basically seventy kilograms worth of dead weight if the power wasn't engaged, so it was pretty unlikely that Saotome would find the laps a refreshing break from the rigours of simulation combat. The blue haired kid ripped the signs from around his neck and flung them to the floor.

"Damn you Mikhail!" he roared, then ponderously turned on one foot and started clunking his way forwards.

"That's Lieutenant to you! Add another lap!" Mikhail exclaimed with a grin and a flourish, drawing laughter from the crowd and a muttered curse from Saotome, which had even drawn spectators from the bridge crew by that point in time – Ram, Mena and Monica were clustered around Bobby's distinctive afro. They seemed to be busy gossiping like a pack of schoolgirls, but I gave them a friendly wave anyway. Bobby seemed to be the only one to spot it and by way of reply gave me an exaggerated wink. Maintaining my composure, I hurried after Luca, who by now was giggling at Mikhail's shoulder.

"What's so funny?" I enquired as I caught up.

"Oh, not much. Just discussing how much Alto needed this hit to his pride," Mikhail replied, his voice slightly smug after being the instigator of a public humiliation.

"Well, he definitely needed that," I said with a smile, before getting back to my work.

* * *

As it turned out, Ozma wanted me to train Saotome in personal defence as part of his training. That was fine with me – while I couldn't fight as effectively unarmed as I could while swinging a pair of swords, over the years my natural speed, power and knowledge of weak points on the human body had allowed me to put together a crude style of defensive hand to hand fighting. While crude, it had ranked me above Ozma, Mikhail and Luca (unsurprisingly in the case of the last two) in the company. Canaria had ranked above me, but was busy doing something for the medical bay.

So in the early evening the past four days, Saotome and I had convened in the dojo so I could beat the living hell out of him. Unfortunately for Saotome, I was a firm believer in teaching via the 'school of hard knocks' method – it was how I learned to fight myself and as such, the best way I knew to get results fast. His sole instructions were to stay on his feet for two minutes, by any means possible.

Not that I expected him to be able to, but he still had yet to do that. I was basically laying into him with fairly standard kicks, punches and grabs and letting him work out the most appropriate defences for them. With training like this, as I had explained to him, the whole point is to train your body to become used to keeping track of the incoming blows through fear of pain. You don't want to get hit by me, I had explained to him, because I _will_ hurt you. In this way, he'd hopefully become fast enough to avoid or block where appropriate, and learn to anticipate which of my blows would strike at a vulnerable location and prioritise accordingly.

Unfortunately for him, I was there to teach him how to defend himself from a determined attacker, not defend from telegraphed punches and kicks. So I'd sit in a roughly unvarying attack pattern until he had almost had all the counters for that pattern figured out, then introduce something different or increase my speed _just_ enough to slip past Saotome and put him on the ground again, then repeat the process until we were done for the day. Over the past four days he'd collected a number of large bruises across his arms, torso and face from me to complement the bags under his eyes he was getting from the late nights spent in the simulators. The oldest of these were starting to turn a dull yellow now, while the freshest remained stubbornly dark blue. It almost made me feel for him.

"Alright, so there you'd probably want to try and parry the feint and dodge the follow up," I told Saotome as I hauled him up from the floor. Despite the fact I wanted him to learn for himself, I wasn't adverse to offering advice - especially towards the end of the session when he was usually pretty dazed and unable to think properly. The kid's eyes were definitely glassy now, that last closed fist strike to the floating rib having caused Saotome's head to bounce rather bodily off the mat as he went down.

"Ugh," he moaned in reply, trying to nod. The action caused him to start wobbling dangerously and he drunkenly fought for his balance, eventually levelling out when I steadied him. I took his shoulders and eyed him over carefully – by my best guess he wasn't concussed, just stunned silly. That was a good thing for me – it would be somewhat detrimental to my job if I got drummed out of S.M.S. for overdoing it on the new recruit.

"Well," I began while looking him in the eye, "I think that's it for us today. How steady are you on your feet?" Saotome's eyes were beginning to focus now – a good sign that his recovery was under way.

"Mrgble," I was told, and he took a wobbling step away from my support, almost collapsing. I steadied him again and sighed.

Why couldn't he take his hits like a Heroic Spirit? I swear I wasn't this weak when I started learning how to fight.

At that moment the dojo door slid open and a by now familiar female face framed by pink hair poked through the gap. Her eyes caught mine and she smiled in greeting.

"Hello Shirou," she said, and I turned to give her a wave. As I did so, her eyes focused past me onto Saotome and she looked confused for a second as she tried to place him in the S.M.S. hierarchy. Her eyes widened slightly, presumably as she realised it was someone she'd never seen before.

"Is that the new recruit?" she asked me, and again I nodded.

"I have the dubious honour of being his self defence trainer," I said with a grin and started to walk Saotome towards the door Nene was hiding behind. Her eyes traced his body, taking in the extent of his bruises. She gave me a slightly disapproving frown.

'I think you might have overdone it a bit," she told me reproachfully. I shrugged off the criticism as I finished walking Saotome to the door – I was the one who was doing the teaching, not her, and I could teach as I saw fit. Once we reached the door, I managed a peek around the portal blocking us from the parts of Nene that wasn't her head, and noticed she still hadn't changed into her training outfit yet.

"Well anyway," I said, "Warrant Officer Saotome Alto, meet Second Lieutenant Nene Rora. She's a pilot in the Pixie squadron."

"Brrmgl," Saotome said, which I chose to translate roughly as 'charmed, I'm sure.' His hand unsteadily made its way up for a salute, which he gallantly managed to pull off despite his bodily circumstances. Nene returned it (much more casually) and gave him a worried look which she swung around onto me after a second or two.

"Nene, meet Saotome," I said with a wan smile. Her expression tightened into disapproval at my attempt to blow off her concerns.

"What were you doing again?" she asked, an unusual touch of iron lacing her voice. I found it odd that she was getting worked up about this – surely she must have taken some hard knocks while learning kendo so it's not like this kind of thing should be unusual to her. I guess it _was_ possible that I was overdoing it, but I never got any complaints from Saotome, who despite the fact he was getting beaten all over the dojo, in fact seemed quite determined to succeed and would usually get ready to go again without prompting. Neither had I heard anything from Ozma asking me to tone it down a bit, so I was under the impression I wasn't pushing the kid too far.

"Training," I replied curtly. "But we're done for tonight so I was about to help him to his room," I told the pink haired meltran, who nodded in a satisfied manner. Well, hooray for me. I was apparently doing the morally correct thing by not subjecting him to any more training that wouldn't benefit him in his condition anyway.

"I can help you carry him if you want," she offered in her usual quiet voice, apparently satisfied enough to drop her grievances against my training methods.

"Sounds good to me," I replied, masking the minute tick of grumpiness I was feeling at her earlier actions with practised ease. She manoeuvred around his open shoulder and hefted it up so we had him most of his mass supported between us. It was something me and Nene were unusually getting used to, considering that although we'd really only known each other for about a week and this was the third time we'd had to string someone between us.

"Yrrrmlmn!" Saotome slurred, and I felt him jerk a little just as we had him balanced nicely. Almost simultaneously, Nene and myself turned, one eyebrow raised each, to shoot him a confused look. His eyes were focused now, making them easier to read - and they turned from stubbornness to resignation as we kept a firm grip on him and dragged him through into the corridors of the Quarter.

Once Saotome was comfortably down on his bed, something I can only assume he was grateful for, Nene and I made our way back to the dojo. Well, Nene was making her way back to the dojo to start the training that Saotome and I had interrupted when she offered to help us take him back. I, on the other hand, was actually heading past the dojo to let Ozma know my job was done for the day, then I had to head out on business.

"So I take it you don't approve of my training methods," I said casually, trying to gauge the depths of her ire for them.

"Well, I haven't actually seen how you're doing it, but the results look a little... excessive," she said, lacking the steel her voice had had earlier, but still as close to a disapproving tone as it was possible to be without crossing the line. "Were you trained the same way?"

"I never received any formal unarmed training, but it was how I learned the sword," I noted clinically. "I take it you were taught via drilling?"

Drilling was a legitimate method of training, but it could take time. Additionally, it was better suited to the more formal styles of fighting based off a particular weapon or set of weapons, where specific strikes could be used to counter other weapons and other strikes. For example, defending with a single longsword against a spear required a probing strike (not an easy thing to do with a heavy sword) to deflect the direction of the spear's strike, where by contrast defending against another blade could involve simply intercepting the arc of the slash in a solid block. By repeating the same moves over and over again, they began to bury themselves into muscle memory and could be as effective as my form of training. Without the backing of fear of pain though, it took far longer for the lessons to sink into your muscles – and when your style didn't rely on any particular weapon drilling with a particular weapon was just a waste of time.

"Yeah," she replied. "I used to spar regularly when I was younger, but not as much as you apparently have." That in itself wasn't unusual. Kendo practitioners typically sparred for competitive purposes, and if she was any decent she would have done the competitive rounds at least once as a child. Sparring in kendo required the competitors to be wearing torso and upper body armour to prevent injuries however, completely missing the point of sparring for practice (at least in my opinion anyway - I'm sure there are a lot of people in the world who would argue that point with me, including the meltran I was currently accompanying).

A brief contemplative silence was broken by Nene as she turned to face me and issue a somewhat insightful comment. "You know, I've never seen you practise. I mean, I've seen you train your body, but never with a weapon." Well. This meltran was quite observant. As I prepared my reply, I noticed Nene's face colour slightly and it was easy to tell she was trying to keep her eyes from dancing around the room when I met her gaze - obvious signs that her natural shyness was reasserting itself over the discontent caused by subjecting Saotome to my lessons.

"That's true enough," I conceded. "Like I told you earlier, I have an unorthodox technique which can really only be practised in actual combat. In a way, when we have our spar, it will be my first training since I've arrived on Frontier." In reality, it was a bit longer than that since I'd last had some decent practice. "Speaking of which," I continued, the mention of our spar reminding me, "sorry I still haven't gotten to organise that with you. I got a bit busy having to train Saotome and got swept away in sorting out the repairs for my bird as well."

My VF-25 was actually back up to combat readiness after the pounding it got in the initial Vajra attack - something I was grateful for. As I'd hoped, investing the time to become well-liked and helpful to my ground crew had paid off in spades. My Messiah was combat ready a day before schedule, and when I got a chance to put it through it's paces yesterday it was exquisitely tuned. It was such a smooth ride that Ozma had to call me back to base three times I'd finally heard him, I was enjoying myself so much. At least according to him - I was having so much fun pulling high G turns, twists and transformations that he could have tried to call me in thirty times and I probably would have missed it. In addition to my own variable fighter, there was also a new addition to the hangar floor that I was lending a hand with - Saotome's new ride. It was a standard VF-25 like mine, the former owner of which (one Henry Gilliam) was the unfortunate test pilot who managed to slew the bird into an asteroid at Mach seven almost two months ago, which I vaguely recalled from my induction notes. As a result of losing that game of chicken with one hundred and sixty tonnes of mostly solid iron, the frame had to be completely rebuilt at L.A.I. - which they had finished a couple of days ago and delivered to us.

Of course a frame by itself isn't overly useful, so the ground crews were taking turns to load it up with the equipment required for use by a military provider, such as armour plating, weapons and communication systems. I got my hands on it when it was my unit was completely fixed, and although Saotome's VF-25 was barely halfway prepared for combat, a Structural Grasp magecraft at least let me know that it wasn't showing any signs of its previous mishap.

"It's alright," Nene assured me. "We've all been a bit busy. When does suit you?"

I thought for a quick moment. "How about after Saotome has his final test? I'm not sure exactly when that will be, but I won't have to bother with training him after that." I say that now, but I knew Ozma and Mikhail were enjoying seeing Saotome suffer at my hands just a _little_ too much, so it wouldn't surprise me if they wanted me to continue with his 'self defence' for a while afterwards. Not that I would for that purpose, but if he wasn't up to scratch he might need to take remedial lessons…

"Sounds good," the pink haired meltran said with a smile. "Let me know when you know."

"Okay," I concluded rather neutrally, and Nene peeled off to the dojo entrance with a smile and a wave, leaving me strolling through the corridors of the Quarter by myself. I seemed to have pacified her quite nicely - perhaps her issues with my style of training was simply the shock at seeing me deal out the physical punishment like that. After all, she had only seen me when I was trying to engender trust between us, and thus on my nicest behaviour, so seeing me putting the hurt on Saotome might have rattled that image a bit.

* * *

One of the advantages of living in a giant colony ship was the climate control – Island One took full advantage of this by bathing it's occupants in an eternal spring. Obviously that solution wasn't as viable for some of the other supporting ships, seeing as traditional agriculture required the passing of seasons to grow crops, but for the major population centre of the fleet, everything was designed around the comfort of the average human being.

What this meant for me right now was that rather than freezing my extremities off on a cold January night, I was enjoying a slightly chilly but not unpleasantly cold breeze on an otherwise unremarkable January night as I made my way through the Shibuya district, having stopped on the way to my meet with whoever my contact was sending in order to get some dinner. Eventually my meanderings lead me across a large pedestrian crossing where I was assailed by holos for Sheryl's 'revenge' concert to a small udon shop that was little more than a polished wooden bar (Eden oak if my guess was accurate) that fronted a small cooking area, where a pair of old bald men were somewhat stereotypically bustling around, taking orders and pumping out udon like no tomorrow.

The shop was doing decent business, and I managed to find a seat down the end of the bar, where I ordered some tempura udon, and quietly began taking in the atmosphere of the shop. The amount of ambient noise from the cooking process and the background conversation limited the ability of quietly spoken words to reach more than two seats down the bar. The shop itself was served by one fairly open customer entrance and a staff entrance, and there was enough room behind the bar to manoeuvre in a fight if necessary.

I clicked my tongue in frustration at myself, drawing an odd look from one of the old men behind the counter – I was here to have dinner, not assess the shop's suitability as a battlefield. Old habits I supposed, and as much as I was not consciously trying to think about it, by now I was fairly certain I could map out three escape routes to get to each door, depending on the level of opposition I was facing. I guess it's just a case of after fifty or so years in the job, my subconscious was able to just automatically work out the details for me.

Which was a good thing, because I nearly shot through the roof when I heard a feminine voice sail over my shoulder, in _Japanese_!

"Fancy meeting you here, Mr Counter-Guardian-in-training Emiya,"

I would like to think that I respond to most situations with a calm head, an open mind and a reasonable idea of how it's going to play out. This was definitely _not_ one of those times. I swung around on my stool faster than a normal eye could follow, preparing to Trace Kanshou and Bakuya into hands already positioned for a hard block.

"Now now Emiya-kun, that's no way to treat an old friend," the woman behind me tsk'ed, as though chiding a little kid. She was unarmed, but I knew that face – scruffy, short dark blue hair framing an angular pair of blue eyes. Usually the rest of her features followed the angles of her eyes to give something of a stern expression, but right now she was giving me a broad smile, as though she knew some cosmic secret about me that could be used for blackmail. Her choice of outfit was a simple yellow sundress under a deep red jacket, which reminded me of Ranka for some odd reason.

"The young lady is right you know," one of the cooks rumbled jovially from behind me in Japanese (fairly accented – only a few traditional families maintained high quality Japanese after Space War 1, the rest of the Japanese survivors becoming fluent in English to survive in the ruined world that was Earth). I ignored him completely – he had no idea who he was talking about.

"Ciel," I muttered in reply. "What's an ex-Burial Agent doing here?"

Ciel dodged my question by sitting down next to me. Although I hadn't yet Traced anything, my hands were still gripping non-existent weapons – the first time I'd run into the woman sitting next to me we ended up tearing holes throughout the fledgling colony on Eden during the dead of night. Eventually that destructive battle ended up with Ciel in three parts and me slipping away from the colony with a broken leg and bleeding pretty heavily out of three holes in my chest.

Both of us were _definitely_ surprised when we next met.

"Oh, you know, hunting Dead Apostles, the usual." She replied, holding her smile. That didn't really surprise me all that much. The second time we met she had declared me to be Dead Apostle, which was laughable to me of course, but to someone who would have assumed any normal human should have died from my wounds, it may have been an acceptable assumption. Of course, the last time I had actually seen her she was in three distinct pieces so my immediate response was something along the lines of 'no, you are!' and we were at it again.

That particular fight ended up setting a barn on fire and depriving a farmer of three tractors, followed somewhat accidentally by his life. The only upside was that I managed to convince Ciel I _wasn't_ a Dead Apostle by wearing one of her precious Black Keys through my upper left forearm for the majority of the fight without turning into dust. That particular melee ended up in a similar fashion to the first, with Ciel ostensibly dead and me mortally wounded.

"Dead Apostles in general or one in particular?" I asked her tersely. Technically we were working for the same employer now, and if I could lend a hand with her job I wasn't adverse to it, but we both had our reasons for not enjoying each others company. And we both had our reasons for trying to open each others veins.

Like when I restrained her after our second battle and tortured her to find out why she wanted me dead so badly. Turned out she was a relic from an organisation I was very glad to find out hadn't survived Space War 1. Ciel was a member of the Burial Agency, the shadowy arm of the old Catholic church that dealt in purging the inhuman from the world. The old Catholic church itself was almost completely torn asunder in the Zentraedi surface bombardment, she'd told me, all the upper echelons annihilated, along with the members of her secret branch and even the knowledge of branch itself. Over time, the Catholic church had rebuilt itself from the few surviving ministers, but none of them had an inkling of the abhuman hunting performed by her (and somewhat thankfully, the dark secrets hidden by the old guard).

"Roa," she told me, dropping the mask of smiles for a second. She shook her head and then her hardened angular features disappeared back behind the smile. "Curry udon please," (_Curry udon?) _she told the cook who had piped up earlier, and he yelled the order back to his compatriot with a flourish.

I, on the other hand, relaxed my guard. Roa was a Dead Apostle that achieved the immortality characteristic of his species by transferring his soul from body to body rather than focusing on preserving his body through absorbing fresh D.N.A. It happened that Ciel was a former host to his soul and through an odd exception of existences with Gaia, could not die while the soul of Roa still existed, and nor would she age. So for Ciel, destroying this Dead Apostle was personal – not only had Roa exploited her body and forced her to commit atrocities (which she had described for me in graphic detail while I was interrogating her) while his soul was inhabiting her, she couldn't release herself from this existence until he was completely dead.

When Ciel was hunting Roa, everything else on her mind got shelved, which is why I suddenly felt a lot safer. It meant she wasn't thinking about how to leave me as a pile of bloody organs on the floor.

On the other hand a Dead Apostle also could complicate things considerably, what with me busy dealing with the Vajra and all.

"He's on Frontier?" I asked Ciel, as I went back to slurping down noodles. I had helped Ciel kill a Dead Apostle before, and it was by no means an easy task. Thankfully, their numbers were dwindling naturally as well, as in the immediate aftermath of the Zentraedi blitz on Earth several starved as the population of their feedstock plummeted. Ciel shook her head in reply.

"No. I felt his soul emerge into this region on space, but that was when I was on Earth so I couldn't pinpoint it with accuracy."

I nodded – being aware of Ciel's connection to Roa, I was also aware of her ability to detect when and where his soul was.

"So he's on Galaxy then?" I asked, and Ciel nodded again as she expertly caught the bowl of noodles one of the old men had slid down the polished bar top. Galaxy was often called the sister fleet of Frontier, as for the past ten years or so it had been travelling roughly parallel to the Frontier fleet towards the centre of the galaxy, about thirty light years coreward of us. The fleet itself prided itself on it's advanced technology, especially in the area of human augmentation. Such a place would probably not be the preferential choice of abode for a Dead Apostle, as the few I had read about were firm believers in their own mystic arts and shunned technology when given a chance, so maybe he was trying to keep a low profile. In which case, it clearly wasn't working, seeing as Ciel chasing him.

"It seems so," she said with a shake of her head and a sigh.

"So what are you still doing here then? I would have expected you to put a spacesuit on and jump out of an airlock if it could get you to Galaxy any faster than taking a fold flight," I said, only half joking.

"It's not that easy anymore," she told me, somewhat melancholically. That was a new emotion for me to hear from the blue haired murder machine. "I'm running out of Black Keys, and don't have any way to replace them. And the only Conceptual Weapon I still have capable of destroying Roa is the Seventh Holy Scripture."

I nodded slowly, using my chopsticks to fish out a bit of tempura. I could finally see where this was going, and I didn't like it one bit. I guess my displeasure must have slipped onto my face, because Ciel sighed again before continuing.

"I can tell you've figured it out now. Yes, I am going to Galaxy tomorrow. I was hoping to recruit you to be my muscle just in case."

I shook my head slowly. Normally it wouldn't have been a problem for me, but my priority was already here, getting to the bottom of the Vajra attacks. She should have known this already – that information was easily accessible by someone of her standing with Alaya, a knowing agent of the Counter Force, the collective guiding force that acts to prevent humanity's extinction. I knew she was recruited after our fourth clash, allowing her to continue plying her trade. The only effective difference between the old Ciel and the new one was that she simply had a new benefactor – instead of the Church she was under the control of Alaya.

"I can't leave here, and you know it," I told her accusingly. Revenge was not the purpose of the Alaya, but at the same time Roa was a definite threat to humanity, so there had no doubt been some sort of cross purposes at assigning Ciel to dealing with the Dead Apostle.

"I'm not asking you to," she clarified for me. "I'm going by myself, but I'm not impatient enough to run off after Roa if I'm going to run out of weapons. All I want to know is if you'll come to help me if I ask you to, Mr. Counter-Guardian-in-training,"

Ugh. I hated that nickname – it was a Ciel special. After allying herself with Alaya, Ciel could access background information on all of it's current assets, myself included. This included_ all_ my abilities and background information.

So Ciel found out about the deal I made nearly fifty years ago. In exchange for the miracle of saving Rin Tohsaka from the initial Zentraedi razing of Earth, I would pledge myself to serve Alaya in death as a Counter-Guardian - a cleaner, killing innocent and guilty alike if they were perceived to be a potential cause of human extinction. She also knew about how Rin had died barely two weeks later, swept up in a skirmish with a Zentraedi patrol while I was away from our 'base' (a tent pitched up against a small overhang) scavenging for resources, thus rendering the point of me becoming a Counter Guardian entirely moot. While Rin's death in itself had broken me, the icing on the cake in that regard was that I had become that which I once swore never to become, and for no valid reason.

I can still remember the thrill of rage I felt as I crested that sandblasted hill and saw five Zentraedi Regult suits blasting away at my Rin. She was evading well, but my Reinforced eyes could spot the sweat dripping from her face, betraying her tiredness. I dropped the pack I was carrying and sped down towards the combat as fast as my legs could carry me, but there was still three kilometres separating us, so I couldn't make the ground as fast as I wanted. I remember watching as Rin countered one suit with a high powered Gandr shot to the chest. Normally the curse would simply apply a sickness to the target, but Rin had pumped enough odo into the shot that the sheer momentum behind it punched a hole straight through the battle-scarred chestplate of the Regult and the soft flesh of the giant sized soldier within. She grinned for a brief second as pulped organic matter poured from the Regult, and that was the last I saw of her alive. In her moment of triumph, she had been flanked, and with her odo and energy drained, she couldn't move fast enough to avoid the lasers of two of the remaining Regults and vanished into a patch of of quickly hardening glass in the desert sand. I remember seeing red, and my anger flared hotter than the blasting desert winds.

I have been told that no human can beat battlesuited Zentraedi without a variable fighter, but on that day there was nothing that could stand against my rage. I made sure the Zentraedi saw me coming, because I wanted them to know just who was taking revenge. It didn't help them one bit - within minutes the only thing walking within a one kilometre radius was me.

With nothing to live for, I considered ending myself right there and then. But Alaya had other ideas. In order to hone my skills, I was compelled to work against the Zentraedi in the U.N. Spacey, which I did. It also taught me the ability to lock away unnecessary thoughts and emotions when in a combat situation - something critical to my survival then. That ability eventually slid into my non combat life, which helped me function as a normal human again instead of spending my downtime inebriated and living with a rather bad (but completely justified at the time) tendency I had of simply flying into a berserker rage and the sight or mention of Zentraedi. I pulled myself away from that abyss and caught sight of my of my ideals again (although I never truly held them again), but it had taken a _long_ time.

As a living agent of Alaya I had a lot of leeway in interpreting my orders (which came upon me in terms of odd compulsions - before I began planning to come to Frontier I had the strangest and most random urges to go travelling in this direction of the universe), and could work the long game as opposed to getting thrown into an enemy stronghold and killing my way out. I also had my suspicions that my ageing had been halted artificially by Alaya in order to keep me at my peak physical age. In short, it was honing me into a scalpel, and the only thing stopping me completely becoming one was my stubborn refusal to actually die and subject myself totally to my fate – while I was still alive I could apply my own solution to problems I was assigned to, solutions which didn't end in a bloodbath. Hence Ciel's nickname for me, as in her mind, for all intents and purposes I was effectively a Counter Guardian, with the small caveat of having _not_ actually died yet.

Incidentally, our next meeting after she had become an agent of Alaya was the first time we hadn't come to blows, in the aftermath of the Sharon Apple incident.

"Stop zoning out," Ciel snapped, and I shook my head to break my reverie. "Can you help me or not?"

Technically I didn't have to help her, but it was unusual for Ciel to be this civil when dealing with me, and this piqued my curiosity. Besides - chances are that I'll be caught up in my own work anyway and too busy to help, in which case I'd have lost nothing.

"Sure, I can be your walking armoury if I'm not busy," I conceded gruffly, moving to finish off my udon quickly. Ciel knew my abilities, so I had no doubt that her idea of help involved providing her with replicas of some of the weapons lost to her. Sure, we would be separated by thirty light years, but again, I only promised to help if I could. "You know how to get in touch with me?"

Ciel's face returned to the broad smile I was so very unused to seeing on it. "Of course I do," she said with a bounce - and as if to punctuate that point, my phone chimed. I glanced at it with a sour expression, and sure enough there was a two word message reading 'hi clown' on the display, from an unknown number. I looked back up at Ciel and she flashed me a thumbs up. I groaned.

"As thanks for that, I do have something to give you," the blue haired ex-Burial Agent told me.

"Oh," I said, raising my eyebrow to let some more of my exasperation show on my face. "And why wasn't this mentioned earlier?"

"I wanted to save it to buy your help, if I needed to," she informed me, that _damned_ cheeky smile threatening to split her face in two. I finally realised why it was bugging me so much - she actually looked genuinely happy.

"Well, now that you don't have to buy my support, can I have it?" I asked, not really expecting anything. Ciel made a show of bringing an index finger to her mouth and looking towards the ceiling, as if deep in thought.

"We~ell, I could do that," she conceded, then brought her eyes back to mine. "Or I could hang onto it and use it to buy another favour out of you later." I met her beaming face with a stony gaze and raised my eyebrow slightly higher - the meaning of which was easy to decipher.

Ciel retracted the finger in order to use her chopsticks again. "Don't worry, it's nothing material," she said cryptically, taking a long slurp on her udon. I shrugged and gobbled down the last of my udon, then nearly jumped off my seat as warm breath played over my ear and a hand grabbed down _hard_ on my right arm. That damn witch! I knew she was trying to trick me!

"Relax," the blue haired murder machine whispered in my ear. I was anything but relaxed. The only thing stopping me from Tracing into my free hand and carving her inside out was the fact that she'd beat me to it without a doubt. If she was keen to talk, then let her.

"You might be interested to know they're dissecting a Vajra corpse on Island Three. At the government run xeno-ecology lab," she breathed over my ear in the sharp tone I was used to hearing from her, no doubt trying to prevent the info from reaching the ears of anyone around us. Coincidentally, that made us look like a pair of happy-go-lucky lovers, at least until anyone went to the effort of getting a closer look at my face, which I was doing my best to get back under control. I was still furious at being jumped, but at least the information was useful enough. I'd have to plan a trip out to Island Three on my downtime in the next few days and infiltrate that facility.

Ciel slowly let me go, something I would definitely not have done if our situations were reversed. I returned the favour by remaining civil enough to not deprive her of an arm somewhere between the shoulder and elbow. Besides, no point in riling up the customers now – if I was lucky she'd up and leave soon.

"You're so full of anger, Mr. Counter-Guardian-in-training. It's not good for you, you know," she chided me in that light tone she had been using for most of this impromptu dinner date.

"And you're so happy it's wierding me out, what's up with that?" I countered, sick and tired of not having the initiative in this conversation. Ciel wasn't having any of that though, as she finished off her udon with a final slurp and stood up.

"It's a secret," she beamed. "Good luck!"

And with that she spun around on her heels and walked out of the shop, leaving me fuming over my empty noodles bowl.

* * *

And so it was I found myself standing (in a somewhat calmer mood), rather late at night, in the shadows of a dingy alley in the King's Cross district (a district based on somewhere in pre-Space War Sydney, if the tourist guide to Island One was telling the truth). The lighting in the area was poor, construction was definitely substandard and everyone on the streets kept moving and kept to themselves. I kept my back to the wall and my wits about me – I had seen plenty of places like this in the galaxy, and the one rule to stay out of trouble was to not draw attention to yourself.

In actuality, I wasn't worried in the slightest about being to handle myself in a mugging or a street brawl – rather I was worried about the attention I would get from such a commotion.

As the clock ticked over to 2300 hours, a heavyset suited man with a large case slung over his shoulder entered through the mouth of the alley. He was attempting to hug the shadows as much as possible, but thanks to the flow of odo I was running into my eyes I could pick his figure out clearly. How on earth he was carrying the case was beyond me seeing as it was more than double his height, but he was managing somehow. As his eyes surveyed the alley suspiciously I stepped forward into a combat stance, ready to trace at a moment's notice. The movement drew the man's attention as I had planned, and he tensed.

"Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring," the suited man hissed down the alley towards me, trying to put a sing-song lilt into his voice, and failing miserably.

I allowed my mind to relax slightly while maintaining my combat stance. One day I'd have to talk the greying man into using proper sign/countersign phrases. Until then I'd still be stuck with his rather poor sense of humour.

"Banana phone," I replied, completing the countersign.

I watched as the suited man strode forward, the tension in his stance quickly being replaced with confidence. I lowered my arms as he reached me, assuming a neutral pose. His hand dove into his suit pocket and came back out carrying a dark velvet bag, which was proffered to me. I carefully took the bag and placed it in my own jacket pocket (tonight I wasn't wearing my S.M.S. jacket, for obvious reasons). Inside it I felt a small, flat palm sized chunk of something solid.

"The trackers?" I enquired, my voice controlled. The suit nodded.

"Five IFT-4088's, just like you asked for." The Intra Fleet Tracker was a range of electronic trackers designed by the N.U.N.S. intelligence department for use on colonisation fleets. As far as I understood they used military positioning systems built into the hulls of colonisation fleets to triangulate the location of the tracker in a similar fashion to a GPS system. In reality, I didn't care too much for how it worked – these trackers would maintain a signal in all areas of the fleet and were accurate down to millimetres, perfect for what I had in mind. Additionally they were almost completely electronically silent, relying on a passive signal reflection from the tracker, rather than it emitting it's own locator signal.

The suited man then began to struggle with the case that was hanging off his shoulders, and I instantly went on guard. I hadn't asked for anything else, so this was suspicious behaviour as far as I was concerned. The suit noticed my change in aura and put the weight of the case back on his shoulders.

"Hold up," he said, a crooked smile winding onto his face. "This is from the boss too."

"I didn't ask him for anything apart from the trackers," I told the suit coldly. He seemed to sense he was in trouble and backed up a step, opening his hands and holding them palm up in a pacifying gesture. I didn't budge.

"The boss said it's a present, he said you'd appreciate it. Told me to tell you it was specially made," the suit continued calmly. I gave him a hard look which he met. Apparently this guy was an old hand in clandestine meetings – he was playing to keep his skin intact without acting overly suspicious.

"Put the case against the wall," I ordered him, in a compromise. I was still suspicious, but seeing as 'the boss' had it specially made for me, it caught my curiosity. It might be dangerous, but I didn't want to just get rid of it in case it was something useful. The man shrugged off the case and gently put it upright against the wall – indicating that despite the size of it, it wasn't too heavy. The case itself was dark leather and latched in three places up and down the side, with the shoulder strap being the only form of conveyance I could spot. What really got my attention was the height of the case – even though the suit was short, the case was still roughly double my height.

"Thanks," I told the suit, "you can go now. Next time, choose a nicer place for the drop."

I caught a ghost of a smile float across his face as he turned around, and a few seconds later I was alone in the alley, with just a large leather case for company.

"Okay, lets see what you are," I muttered to myself, raising a hand to lay it on the leather. As I did, I allowed a trace of odo to flow from my fingers into the case. Inside my head, a wireframe of the case began building up. The outer leather was stretched over a soft plywood frame, which in turn was covered on the inside by a felt material. I concentrated around the latches and hinges, both sets of which were constructed of stainless steel, a cheap and low maintenance metal. As I finished my Structural Grasp on the case, it became clear to me that it wasn't trapped, so I turned my attention to the contents.

No.

No!

I had barely formed the basic outline of the contents of the case before I broke the Structural Grasp magecraft with a thought and fumbled for the hatches. I could feel the blood drain from my face as I hurriedly I lay the case down on the concrete lining the footpath and with a quick wrist movement flipped it open. Inside, nestled in the soft felt designed to keep it safe and steady was a large bow.

Not just any bow – A bow I had seen only _once_, and despite that, the image of that bow would haunt me forever.

My eyes widened as I studied it. It was long, dark and sleek. The tips flared out slightly towards the tails, and in the centre of the body, an elaborate two piece shielded grip existed, bulking out the body and making the bow easier to draw without sacrificing strength.

Counter Guardian Emiya's bow.

A small part of my brain noticed several coiled strings in their own section of the case. The rest of it was busy trying to deny the existence of the weapon in front of me. Eventually I managed to regain control of my scattered senses and flipped the lid shut. Crouching next to the case, I gently buried my head in my hands and allowed my stunned mind quickly ran through the options. In reality there were only two. At this point in time my gut feeling was to walk straight out of this alley, forget I'd ever received this 'gift' and let it rot. My more logical side was arguing that my contact had no possible idea of my relationship to the weapon (or to be more accurate, the wielder and his ideals), and when all was said and done, it _was_ a well made weapon, and capable of launching Broken Phantasms at that.

Damnit. I _needed_ more time than the few minutes available to me – I couldn't make this decision lightly, I just couldn't.

So I stood up, swinging the case over my shoulders as I did so. All I could do was temporarily box the emotions running rampant through my mind and get back to base with the bow. There was a lot of night left tonight, and sitting in my barracks room doing my thinking was infinitely more preferable than sitting in some dingy alley in a part of town with the kind of reputation this place has.

The walk back to the barracks was uneventful, but long. The case was large, but the strapping was well designed and with a couple of adjustments it was easy enough to sling over my shoulder and not impede my movements. I took more than my fair share of odd glances from people who were still out this late at night, but no-one seemed interested in giving me a hard time, something I was thankful for. By the time I was back at the Quarter it was well past midnight and the only interference I had to worry about was the guard on duty, who I stopped to have a meaningless chat with to keep up appearances.

I slid the door of my room open and strode in. I fished the small bag containing the trackers out of my jacket and put it down carefully on my terminal table. This was in complete contrast to how I treated the bow case, which was unceremoniously dumped on the floor so I could change my clothes. Once I was clad in a simple pair of boxers and a singlet, I returned to the case, folding myself onto the floor to sit cross legged in front of it.

I regarded the case. Heroic Spirit Emiya, or Archer as I knew him by in the Holy Grail War, was the servant summoned by Rin in that fateful conflict. I sighed. I first met him when I stopped a newly summoned Saber from gutting Rin like a pig, and from that moment on we never really got along. We were enemies from the get go - even when Rin and I had to work together to avoid becoming greasy stains on the floor courtesy of Berserker, he was _still_ trying to kill me. Our ideologies were polar opposites as well – while I was going to become a hero of justice, he was a realist who would constantly go out of his way to let me know how flawed an idea that was.

At the same time, simply being around him caused my Tracing abilities to skyrocket. I found it almost effortless to Trace the swords he would use, and my martial skills with those weapons climbed in leaps and bounds from simply watching him in battle.

It was the combination of those two observations that first clued me into the idea that there was something he knew that I didn't. Archer betrayed Rin to join Caster, then literally backstabbed her with a vengeance – in the process removing any form of command spell binding over him. At the end of that sequence of events I understood that his purpose in the Grail War was simply to kill me. He almost got me then too, if not for Rin and Saber's timely contract and intervention. Instead, he was forced to deploy his trump card, the Reality Marble known as Unlimited Blade Works. I managed to instinctively counter his attack within the Marble, but he got away with an unconscious Rin as a hostage. It was this encounter that I finally understood him.

Archer had gone to ground in the ruins of the Einzbern mansion. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to see I was being strung along like a bull through the nose. He knew exactly how I would react to any situation and played me like an instrument. If I was fighting the Grail War now I like to think I'd be able to see what he was doing and make another choice, but back then all I could do was chase him to defend my ideals by saving Rin and winning the Grail War, despite the apparent fact that saving Rin was effectively suicide and would end up with me saving no-one.

Well, that's not entirely true. Even now, I would probably prioritise Rin's life over mine and make the same choice. The only difference between now and that back then I would have tried to save anyone. Now, if Rin was alive, she'd be the only person who I'd try to save.

I shook my head – I was sidetracking myself and getting away from the real point. Thanks to some rudimentary tutelage under Rin I had improved my ability to manipulate my magic circuits (well, only one, but it sure beat almost killing myself to make a faux circuit every time I wanted to use magecraft), and thanks to watching Archer fight and training with Saber I was able to fight.

Didn't help me that much though. I was still outclassed. By now I was certain that Archer was another version of myself – one that had seen my ideals all the way through to their logical conclusion and come out twisted. He confirmed my hypothesis for me – the Emiya Shirou he had once been now had become the hero he wanted to be, sworn to Alaya as a Counter Guardian in the hopes of saving people for eternity.

Alaya is not about saving people though, it is about the survival of humanity, and as a result Heroic Spirit Emiya did _not_ become a true hero, but rather a cleaner – one who deals death to innocent and guilty alike if it meant the survival of humanity as a whole. His existence was a dead end, a cycle of death, destruction and people in front of his eyes who he couldn't save in order to save countless, faceless others far removed from whatever incident he was fixing at the time. Eventually he came to believe his sole purpose as a Counter Guardian was not to save people in despair, but eliminate them as though they never existed, in order to save humanity – and he couldn't escape.

He wagered his entire existence on being summoned to this war, on the slim possibility that destroying his younger self, before the younger self had the resolve and willpower to become the hero, would generate enough of a paradox in the World to erase his own existence.

Unfortunately for him, for all I didn't know about the world at the time, I _did_ know I was going to become a hero. I had none of the regret or experience he had – the only thing I had was an unshakeable belief in myself and the urge to beat down the know-it-all bastard who was definitely wrong. My projections were inferior to his – there was simply no way I could match his years of experience. I rode my emotions in that battle, pushing myself past my limits in order to simply keep myself alive. It wasn't enough - I was forced to continually re-Trace my blades as they kept shattering on Archer's superior ones until I was worn down and barely able to stand.

Archer, by contrast, was cool and in control. He was in charge of this fight, and he knew it. Every time there was a lull in combat he would try to force me to concede the inherent contradictions in my ideals. He reminded me that my ideal was not my own, but something I had taken from Kiritsugu and run with. He wasn't just looking to kill me – he was looking to break my resolve first.

He almost succeeded.

I distinctly remember my rational mind fading along with my strength and shutting down. Only my dogged emotional belief kept me sane. My body refused to give up, even if my mind had. My mind lost the battle with Archer's because it was weak – it was swayed by his logic. My emotions and my body knew otherwise though, and they carried me through. I remember not caring that my ideals were borrowed, because I knew them to be correct.

I don't really remember the details of the fight at the end – it was a blur. I must have given up on matching Archer with his own skills and instead forced myself to fight with a single sword, suppressing the pain, muscle exhaustion and almost complete odo depletion in order to give in to my single raging desire to show that bastard that I was not wrong – the fight was no longer me against Archer, it was me conquering my own mind. I was fighting with strength I knew I shouldn't have had.

By the end, my body was shattered. Archer must have had dozens of chances to disengage from my wild assault and finish the fight, but he didn't. Maybe he felt the same way that I did – he couldn't run from himself. And so, I finished it.

In the end, I know exactly why he lost. In a clash of ideals, I had the stronger conviction. I reminded him of what he used to believe in – and he hesitated in defending his ideals. I did not.

How time changes us all.

I sighed, breaking my reverie. Archer was long gone, at least the version of him that I knew. When we first met, I hated him. When he left, we had reached a shaky understanding. He still had his ideals to uphold which ran counter to mine, but he was no longer weighed down by hatred and despair. I still believed in my ideals, but recognised things weren't quite black and white as I had naively believed them to be up until that point.

With those heavy thoughts in my mind, I slowly unlatched the case and opened it completely. The most potent symbol of Archer was lying inside. Sure, I had taken his signature swords and made them my own – but swords were my domain. This was a weapon that was definitely his. The only time I had seen it I was unaware of the true nature of my Tracing abilities, and as it wasn't a sword I couldn't automatically catalogue it. In addition, when we were living in London Rin would often describe the weapon and it's abilities to me, building it up in my mind as definitely being a weapon belonging to the Heroic Spirit Emiya, and not me.

I won't deny it. I am scared of this weapon. To the current me it represents all that could go wrong with my existence, all that almost went wrong and all that already has gone wrong. I'm already contracted with Alaya – all I need to do is die and I become a fully fledged Counter Guardian! If I took the bow up, would I fall as Archer did? Would I become the bitter, cynical existence he had become?

Once upon a time I would have known with utter confidence that such a thing would not happen to me, and taken up the bow straight away as a powerful addition to my arsenal. Ever since Rin died, however...

Unsure of myself, I gently put my hand on the bow. As it's not a sword, I couldn't instantly catalogue it and store it in my personal armoury - I would need to perform a Structural Grasp magecraft in order to reconstruct a replica in my soul. I scanned the case again to see if anything else was in it, and under the stored bowstrings I spotted a folded scrap of paper that I must have missed the first time around in my shock. My hand came away from the bow (and away from the temptation to perform a Structural Grasp) to check the paper. The note was written in clean, angular handwriting – my contact's.

'Keep fighting the good fight. Hope this helps.'

Simple words, unsigned. Straight to the point – but that's always been one of his strong points. A self indulgent smile crossed my face. Rin told me that the bow was capable of firing Noble Phantasm's, and in London we had deduced that in order to do that it was probably constructed of some futuristic material (a result of wasting good money on the highest quality bows and watching them snap like toothpicks when I tried to launch Noble Phantasms). Of course, that was about fifty years ago, making the future _now_, so it shouldn't be all that surprising that I run into an original of his bow. And the greying man always had the best intentions, so I knew he wasn't attempting any fast moves on me.

But still, was I running a predetermined path here? By accepting this bow, was I damning myself to become like he had before the Grail War? Rin had theorised that our origins were now different enough that we were separate existences so it shouldn't affect me one way or the other whether I accept the bow or not, but still.

I was scared. And I haven't been scared in a long time.

I turned the lid of the case over the resting bow and did up the latches. One thing Ciel's had said to me once was that the road to hell was paved with good intentions (one that certainly came from her association with the Church back in the day), and despite the power that came with the weapon, I still couldn't convince myself to feel safe enough taking that power for my own. Not now. The case went into the corner and I went to bed.

I didn't sleep well that night.

* * *

Author's notes:

_First up, a couple of spoilers for Tsukihime in the next paragraph!_

_Well, that took a while! The research I had made mention of earlier had to do with Ciel, and while I could get most of the info I wanted online, I ended up getting a mate from Japan to ship me the Tsukihime so I could figure out if she aged at all, and if there was a route of the game where Roa's soul didn't die. As far as I could tell, only SHIKI died in Akiha's route (debatable in the true ending though, as Roa might have hopped to Shiki without any indication), and once I hit that point I figured I'd better drop the game and get back to writing in my free time. Although, if I have my way I'll have Hisui's and Kohaku's route done soonish._

_As for Ciel herself, she was a character I wanted to bring in earlier, initially as some form of comedic relief (think Patrick Colasour from Gundam 00 - rocks up to the fight, gets blown away but somehow just keeps surviving), but that kind of humour got stamped out pretty quickly after the first chapter and so she finds herself helping in a somewhat expositionary role. I enjoyed coming up with a bit of a back story for Ciel in the years since Space War 1, and hopefully it's semi plausible._

_The canon Frontier plot plods steadily onwards, as SMS gear up their new recruit. I mentioned at the start that I was planning to try and break it down so that one episode of events in Frontier would roughly fit into one chapter, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to hold up - I have fairly solid ideas about what I consider to be too much reading for a chapter without wanting to brain myself with a keyboard, so I'll just stop where I feel it necessary now._

_Finally Shirou - a lot of mind issues happening for him throughout this chapter, with events from his past resurfacing in his mind due to some unusual reminders. Unfortunately for now he seems to have gone with the good old ignore it all route, something I'm sure served him well enough in the past, but will probably have repercussions for him later in the plot._

_Hope you enjoyed the read!_


	6. Miss Macross

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 6: Miss Macross.

* * *

"So anyway," I began, leaning back on the bar of the common room, "I was thinking of going to Island Three tomorrow. I've been here almost a month and haven't really gone to check out the other ships in the convoy, you know."

Klan nodded appreciatively from a table she was sharing with her squadron a metre or so away from me. "It's a nice place," she commented, and I continued.

"Anything a tourist should see?" I inquired. I actually wasn't going simply to sate my sightseeing curiosity – Ciel had given me a handy chunk of information a couple of days ago regarding the location of the government based Vajra research and I was planning to follow up on it tomorrow. Things worked best for the company if they knew where you were at all times though (even on breaks), and I didn't want to be caught having spun a lie in case of an emergency – hence my apparent interest in being a tourist for a day. If I told Ozma I was sightseeing, that basically meant I had a reason to be _anywhere_ on the convoy ship if they needed to get in touch with me.

A deep throaty voice interjected from the seat opposite Klan. Anyone not used to hearing the red haired meltran speak might assume she had a cold, but by now I was used to the rocky voice of Ramaria. "I'm going to visit my parents on Island Three for lunch tomorrow, I can show you around once I'm done," she offered.

I suppressed a grimace – I wanted a legitimate excuse to be on the Zentraedi based convoy ship - not a chaperone. I quickly sifted my mind for a reasonable excuse to escape her company and blurted out the first (polite) one that came to mind.

"I wouldn't want to take up your time," I quickly replied, waving my hands in front of my face and attempting to blow off her offer nonchalantly. My other option was to look guilty about wanting her help, but in my experience that only made people want to dig deeper and get involved.

"Pfft, don't worry about it," the red headed meltran croaked out, waving away my protest. "It beats spending the rest of the day at headquarters."

Damnit. "Well, I guess it's better having a guide handy," I conceded thoughtfully with a smile. I couldn't overly protest against having to spend my time alone, or else the someone in this conversation would begin to wonder exactly why I was so insistent on going alone. Looked like I'd have to alter my plans somewhat and prepare for a wasted afternoon. Motion caught my eye across the table from Ramaria, and I turned my attention over to see the cat-like Klan flashing a sly grin at me.

"Two-timing on Nene now are we?"

The taller, pink haired Pixie pilot sitting next to Klan muffled an embarrassed gasp with her hand, while I rolled my eyes. Klan burst into laughter and patted Nene comfortingly on the back.

"Don't worry Nene, a little competition is healthy for you!" Klan exclaimed, wearing a wide smile. If there's one thing I'd learned about the Pixie Squadron Commander, it's that she really liked to stir the pot when it came to her younger squad mate. Probably because she couldn't get the same reactions out of Ramaria, who tended to take her verbal jabs with more aplomb.

"Stop teasing the poor girl Klan," I countered, ignoring the fact that Klan was also trying to rile me up for her enjoyment. "What kind of big sister are you anyway?" I asked her, the crooked grin on my face designed to let the blue haired meltran that I was willing to dish back as much crap as I was receiving.

"The best kind, of course," she stated, straightening out and pushing out her chest in an exaggerated attempt to increase her presence in the room. When you look like a twelve year old kid though, well, lets just say it doesn't work all that well. The overall effect was more like a young kid proud that their drawing was now stuck to the fridge.

"Onee-sama…" Nene moaned, trying to hide her face in her hands. Klan laughed at her embarrassment and I let a quiet chuckle escape my lips. The girls then turned back to themselves, with Ramaria now getting herself involved in seeing how much more blood could be pumped into Nene's face. I turned back to the bar and sipped quietly on my milkshake (old habits die hard). I had run into the Pixie squadron together in this common room as I was winding down for the day. Apparently they had just come off standby, whereas I was rather unproductively killing time by examining a manual for the Tornado FAST pack system that Robbs had loaned to me. (Not so) interesting note: the beam gun turret drew ammunition from the byproducts of the VF-25's reactor as a supplement to generating a useable charge of particles in the 2.6 second reload time, effectively meaning the longer the turret went without firing, the stronger the shot would be. The more you know.

A loud slurping sound emanating from the bottom of my straw drew the attention of both myself and our part time bartender Bobby Margot. He put down the glass he was polishing with a gentle clang and turned his attention to me.

"Can I buy you another drink Shirou?" he crooned, in that odd tone of voice he used. I nodded in a somewhat distracted fashion.

"Another one of these would be great, if you don't mind Bobby" I replied and watched with morbid fascination as his afro came precariously close to dislodging some of the wine glasses from their storage racks above him several times over the course of putting together another milkshake.

"So," he began after replacing my empty glass with a frothing masterpiece of milk, ice-cream and vanilla essence, "what's this about two timing on one of my girls?"

I rolled my eyes and tried to concentrate back on the manual. Boring as it was, it was a pretty vital part of my maintenance routine, and may actually end up saving my life one day. Bobby's shadow was looming over the book though, so I brought my palm up to rest against my forehead for a second or so before bringing my level gaze up to meet his. Bobby was pretty defensive about 'his girls', which as far as I could tell basically included every female on the ship.

"Klan apparently thinks I'm stealing her squadron away," I replied, burying my exasperation behind a mask of polite humour and putting my own spin on what Klan had said earlier - the last thing I needed was for him to team up with Klan.

"And are you?" he inquired, a ghost of a grin edging the corners of his mouth upwards.

"Hardly," I said, allowing a faint note of detached humour into my tone. "I'm going to have a match in the dojo with one of them, and another is showing me around Island Three tomorrow."

"Don't listen to his reasonable overtures Bobby!" a prepubescent voice broke in from behind me. Klan's. I heard a clatter, presumably of the micronised meltran herself jumping off her chair, followed by the dull thunking which I assumed to be a pair of hands slapping the table. "He's turning my squad against each other with his womanising ways!"

I looked at Bobby. He looked at me.

"Have you been slipping whiskey into her tea?" I asked the tight shirted helmsman and part time bartender. He shook his head and I shrugged dismissively, continuing to not rise to Klan's attempts to bait me. Any further attempts on my good reputation were thankfully halted as Ozma strode into the room forcefully and slammed a clipboard down next to the manual that I was apparently never going to get finished.

"The usual please Bobby," my Squad Commander ordered and the curling afro bounced out of my view to mix the graying veteran a drink. I idly glanced at the top cover of the clipboard and wasn't too surprised to find out that it contained Saotome's performance results. Training him up in a hurry had pretty much taken over Ozma's schedule for the past couple of week and a half, and it was obviously getting on his nerves a bit, considering the sullen aura he was currently wearing like a coat.

"Evening Ozma," I offered, but didn't receive a reply until Bobby had slid a whole _stein_ of ice coffee in front of the graying Squad Commander and he'd taken a long pull out of it.

"I needed that," Ozma said with a long sigh, then shook his head slightly. "Evening Shirou. I'm scheduling Alto's final examination for this Sunday," he said without any preamble. He nudged the clipboard towards me, inviting me to take a closer look, which I did.

"Isn't that the same day as the Miss Macross pageant?" I wondered aloud. A lot of holo advertising recently had been playing up the pageant, but I mostly did my level best to ignore the advertising after I'd gotten the relevant facts from the first one that had thrown itself in my face. That changed a little bit when I had received a text from Ranka two days ago saying that she'd made it through to the finals and not to tell Ozma about it. The reason she had thought to inform me of that was because she'd offered me a ticket to come and see the show as thanks for being involved in keeping her alive during our little stint in an emergency shelter. I had briefly considered not going as I didn't really have the interest in that kind of thing, but when I had heard Sheryl was going to be judging I quickly made up my mind and accepted – I still needed to plant a tracker on her and even the small chance to get it done there was better than none. I had heard Saotome also was offered a ticket and accepted, so it was a fairly safe bet that he'd be pretty put out come Sunday.

Bobby had wandered off down the bar now to serve Klan, who I'd heard pull up a seat behind me. I was fairly certain she was up to some good old fashion rumour mongering for her amusement, but Ozma had a reply lined up for me so I didn't get the chance to turn around and nip that in the bud.

"Bah, who cares about that kind of low brow event," he said dismissively. Well, off the top of my head I could think of two people - his sister and his trainee pilot, but in principle I agreed with him and grunted my agreement.

"Are Mikhail and Luca on board for this examination?" I asked the Squad Commander and he nodded. I could hear the hiss of a whispering girl behind me, but by the time I had finished feeding odo into my inner ear she had finished speaking and the only thing I heard was the voice of Bobby as he replied with a conspiratorial "re~eally?" I suppressed a grimace that I could feel forming.

"It's going to be a mock combat with with the Pixies," Ozma told me, bringing me back to our conversation and causing me to wince slightly as my currently oversensitive ears interpreted his voice a fair bit louder than it should have been. I allowed the odo to drain from my ears as he continued. "Luca and Mikhail are going to be his support, because it wouldn't be a fair display of his abilities if you or I were in space with him."

I nodded my agreement again – if Ozma and I went we'd have to completely sit on the side so as to not end up sharing his roles as a frontliner, but Luca and Mikhail would still be able to work their usual squad roles without stepping on his toes. There wasn't much else Ozma needed to tell me, which lead into a brief silence before Klan's unintelligible whispering reminded me of something.

"On a completely unrelated topic – I'll be out sightseeing on Island Three tomorrow, so just ring me if you need me," I told my graying Squad Commander. It was his turn to grunt, this time in acknowledgment.

"-claws into Ramaria too!" I heard from behind me, in the kind of outraged whisper I knew was designed to reach the ears of both the table Klan's squadron was sitting at, and myself. Ozma raised an eyebrow and peered over my shoulder in confusion, probably attempting to figure out exactly what Klan was talking about. He brought his eyes back to mine, and I could read the question in them before he even voiced it.

"Is she talking about you?' he mouthed silently, straining to hear more of the conversation between Klan and the bartender. I'm not certain how he came to that conclusion simply from hearing half a whispered sentence but my next action pretty much confirmed it for him as the corners of my mouth curled downwards and I buried my head in my hands in exasperation. Ozma shot me a queer look and shook his head slightly - a gesture which I chose to interpret as solidarity, but in reality I had no idea what he was thinking.

"That's horrible!" came the scandalised whisper of Bobby from behind me, "those poor girls!"

I was fairly certain I detected a hint of mischief in our helmsman's voice and rolled my eyes skywards. This was definitely going to get around the ship somehow, something I wasn't really looking forwards to. Ozma must have caught the movement on my face because I could almost see the light bulb springing into existence above his head. A broad smile slowly grew on his face which eventuated in a roaring laugh. I glanced at the table where two of the Pixies were sitting, and caught the pink haired one mirroring my expression (and therefore, a rational part of mind mind noted, I had actually successfully been baited by Klan). Ramaria on the other hand was chuckling in a masculine tone that Ozma would have been struggling to match and gave me a _wink_ as I caught her eye. This whole situation began with her, the meltran rat! I gave her a grin in reply - I'd lost a little bit of my composure, so now was a good as time as any to regain it.

I swung around the rest of way on my bar stool to face Klan and Bobby, only to find them both wearing jaw achingly large smiles as they stared in silent expectation at me. There was only one way to deal with situation correctly - swallow my irritation at being made fun of and laugh it up. I dialed up my smile and chuckled back, finding somewhat surprisingly that I wasn't feeling as put out as I had a few moments ago - maybe there was some truth in the old adage stating that if you can't beat them, join them. Rather than look disappointed that the target of her fun (ie: me) wasn't losing his cool, Klan roared with laughter (well, as much roar as her body could handle anyway) that placed itself nicely between Ozma's booming and Ramaria's chuckles. Seizing the initiative, I went back to reading my manual with a smile on my face.

There will be a reckoning one day, you Pixie squadron beasts.

* * *

The morning of the next day passed quickly as I reconnoitered the government facility. It wasn't an entirely private facility, so it was easy enough to find the tall series of buildings that made up the place. A series of grassy foothills provided a perfect vantage point into the compound, and I made the most of my talents by hiring a segway and scooting around the hills. The activity was common enough for the Frontier tourist board to peg it as one of Island Three's draw cards, and I was constantly roving well beyond the range for anyone to get a good glimpse into the facility, so hopefully I wasn't noticed by the two guards on the gate or the thirty four cameras they had lining the carbonocrete walls.

Well, I say I was well beyond range for anyone to get a good look into the facility, but that was a lie. Well beyond range for anyone but me would be closer to the truth.

I had no information on the place other than the location, and there really is so much you can achieve with a half a day casing. My reinforced eyes had picked two of the largest buildings as being the most likely location to store the Vajra corpse, so I had a rough idea of where to steal any relevant data from. Likewise, by early afternoon I was confident I had located all the external security cameras – in addition to the thirty four lining the compound wall in order to keep track of people closing on the facility, another twenty seven cameras were mounted in the compound itself to keep track of internal events. I also caught sight of nineteen smallish metal boxes with no obvious purpose, which I was willing to bet were motion detectors. Whoever had set that place up knew what they were doing, at least for covering external approaches.

The wall was easily low enough for me to bound over fairly easily, the only problem being the eighty seven possible security devices to evade _before_ I even reached one of my target buildings. I had noticed two possible points of entry while I was scooting about. The first was a path that ran along the outer edge of the convoy ship (which the compound itself was backed up against) that only had one external camera covering the approach. The grass would be long enough to cover me as long as I could manage to crawl the kilometre or two from the range of the camera up to the wall.

That was going to be the backup plan though. While I was humming around on my rented segway I had noticed a creek running through a small gully between the hills. As I followed the path of the creek upstream to get around it, I stumbled upon the source – an overly large concrete drainpipe jutting out of the earth. The diameter of the pipe was roughly the same size as the emergency shelter I'd gotten stuck in more than a week ago – easily large enough to fit a human, and also conspicuously large enough in this sparsely populated area that it could really only be the outflow for the facility I was going to visit. That was going to be my initial plan – explore the drain, and if it became obstructed due to security or size issues I could backtrack out and get stuck into plan B.

But now the artificial heat filtering in from the massive infra-red generator banks set into the support structure of the convoy ship were beginning to drop in output, at least if my ability to judge the ambient heat was any good. A quick glance at my phone let me know it was well past time to start heading back to the shopping district Ramaria had promised to meet me at, so I pulled out of the hills and onto the main road behind a trio of high school students before gunning it to the meeting point.

Ramaria herself I met in one of the two zentraedi malls on the island. The mall itself was a seemingly eclectic mismatch of human sized and zentraedi sized architecture, almost giving the place an _Alice in Wonderland_ kind of feel. I actually spotted the red headed meltran herself as I picked my way through a second floor walkway that doubled as a shopfront for oversized musical instruments. Out to my right was a thirty metre tall water feature (a presumably scale model of a whale spitting litres of water out of its mouth straight up every second, with the water cascading down in a shower of refracted light; overall I thought the piece was horridly designed), easily double the height of the giant red haired meltran sitting on edge of it.

I considered yelling, but the mall was too crowded for the macronised Ramaria to pick me out among the oversized drums I was currently picking my way through. I found an escalator and went up a level onto a small walkway that threaded its way behind some guitar necks, found my way to the point closest to the fountain, took a deep breath and bellowed.

"Ramaria!"

The macronised meltran stood up and swung her head around as she heard me, trying to pinpoint where I was without much success.

"Up here!" I shouted, raising my hand and waving. Her gaze went from the lower levels of the mall (well lower levels for me, anyway) up to the level I was on - pity she was sweeping pretty much the opposite side of the fountain to me.

"At the music shop!" I yelled, and she spun around, spotting my waving countenance and greeting me with a smile and a wave.

"Shirou!" she boomed as she strode towards the walkway I was standing on. "You're late!"

"Only by five minutes," I replied with a grin, which slipped off my face as she moved to lean on the walkway like one would lean on a fence to have a chat with their neighbours. There was a loud creak as she settled more of her weight onto the walkway and I winced – anything that could make a couple of tonnes of concrete creak was definitely enough to make me worry, but the structure held. "What's the plan?" I continued, leaning casually back against the guardrail opposite the meltran.

"Well I figured we'd browse here for a bit, then I've got a couple of places we can go. Are you the outdoors type or the cultural type?" Ramaria asked me in a conversational whisper. Despite her good intentions, even that whisper managed to rattle my ear drums; one of the side effects of zentraedi sized lungs.

"Definitely an outdoor person," I said honestly. Despite the fact she was leaning on the walkway, her head still towered over me. Macronised zentraedi in public were fairly rare among the colonies and fleets these days due to the increased costs involved for both the zentraedi and the government. As a result coming face to face with a macronised zentraedi was becoming a rarity for me these days – it used to happen a lot during Space War 1 and the immediate aftermath, but I was _never_ on good terms with those zentraedi. In actual fact, even recently the only dealings I had with macronised zentraedi recently were with the rogue kind – zentraedi who refused to accept the alliance with the N.U.N.S. I began to sift through my memory, trying to find a memory of me actually in conversation with a full blown zentran from within a metre or so.

"Well we might go out and check out some of the natural features and tourist farms then," she whispered, toning her voice down far enough that it felt like I was having a normal conversation.

"Sounds good," I replied distractedly, keeping quiet regarding my morning romp in the hills - if I was lucky we'd end up in the area again and I could have another look at the facility before infiltrating it tonight. I had finally come to the conclusion that this was the first time I'd had a civil conversation with a zentran from this distance when a giant hand emerged from below the walkway - with an open mouth and wide eyes I watched it descend upon me. With surprising dexterity I was snatched up and whirled off the balcony, only to find myself deposited precariously on Ramaria's shoulder. Wasting no time, I promptly fell on my arse and scrambled desperately for handholds in her jacket, anchoring myself firmly to the material.

A blast of air that almost blew me off my perch and a rumble through Ramaria's body that didn't help my attempts to remain steady let me know very clearly that the young meltran was having a quiet chuckle at my expense.

"Well, lets get going then," she rumbled, and then we were off, Ramaria Rerenia the red head meltran and Shirou Emiya the poor sap trying to hang onto her shoulder like a parrot. Sounds like the title of a comic if ever I heard one.

The afternoon was, all things considered, pleasant. Once I'd gotten used to the intricacies of not falling off Ramaria's shoulder (which wasn't easy), there was a surprising amount of tourist-ing to be done. After Ramaria had me critique several outfits for her (wasn't there someone else who could do that for her?) she then proceeded to buy none and I was taken on a whirlwind tour of the countryside. Although we didn't end up back at the facility, there was a lot of ground that could be covered when walking on a pair of meltran legs, and we spent two hours wandering around farms and forests. Normally I'm not one to appreciate nature as much more than a series of obstacles and impediments in a fight, but the perfect temperature, clear 'skies' and picture perfect vistas definitely left a good impression on me – it reminded me of all the good things humans could create and prepare, and reminded me of why I did what I did.

Ramaria seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, even though she was effectively acting as a glorified car for me. Not that I minded of course, I was beginning to enjoy this method of getting about - it gave me an entirely different perspective on life.

We ended the day winding through an area of woodland called the Brightbow forest – it didn't really live up to the name at this point in the day, as the lights were simulating late afternoon and the trees were spread to thinly to qualify as a forest. I felt somewhat qualified to judge on the matter, having seen some real forests in my time. That didn't detract from the serenity of the location though – from my vantage point I could spot people out on picnics, climbing trees or even just relaxing in the shade – both zentran and human alike. I even spotted other pairs of people like us, a human perched on a zentran shoulder, so despite my initial misgivings that we'd stand out (never a good thing in my line of work), we didn't draw so much as a second glance from passers by.

"You know," I noted in passing as I dodged a tree branch, "I've never heard of humans hitching a lift on zentraedi shoulders before. Is it common here?"

"It's more of a couple thing," she boomed, without a shred of embarrassment. "But it seemed the easiest way to get from point A to point B today, seeing as you didn't macronise yourself."

She had a fair point. It was possible for human beings to undergo the macronisation process and end up zentraedi sized, but there were several fairly valid reasons why I had avoided actually up-sizing myself. Firstly, I didn't know how it would react with my circuits or ability to draw proportionate amounts of odo through them – and I sure as hell wasn't about to perform experiments like that on myself. Secondly, I actually obtained nothing useful combat wise by doing so. The extra strength and reach granted to me by the form was nothing I couldn't replicate for myself with liberal use of reinforcement magecraft. Thirdly, it made me a bigger target, which I guess kind of tied in with reason number two. There were a number of other reasons as well, the least of which was the waste of energy involved.

"Fair enough," I replied. "You seem pretty skilled at it," I noted, and she grunted in acknowledgment of the compliment.

"I used to..." she trailed off, and I saw her eyes swing downwards and to the left before she recovered. "Well, we should get back," she finished up, changing the topic entirely. I shrugged off the change of topic – it was her business and on top of me not wanting to pry in order to gain her trust, I didn't overly care that much about a bad breakup – they happened all the time.

We finished up back at the zentraedi mall fairly quickly after that. Ramaria invited me to a bar for a drink, and while I was kind of interested in what kind of bar could accommodate human and zentraedi sized customers at the same time, I had no time to waste, and neither did I want to impair myself tonight with alcohol, so I told her I had some work to catch up on – technically true, and left her to her own devices.

I made it back to the hills surrounding the xeno-biology facility just as the last of the lights embedded in the ship's superstructure were winking out. The air circulators were pushing a warm breeze over the hills, something I don't think I took enough time to appreciate after I found myself ankle deep in an outflow pipe breathing in the creeping stench that characterised outflow pipes everywhere. The pipe itself started out extremely wide and comfortable, and by reinforcing my eyes I could easily pick out a path through the murky water swirling around my feet.

I didn't have a great sense of direction while underground, but I got the feeling that the slowly curving pipe was heading in the right direction. Under slightly less intense circumstances I would have used the fleet positioning device built into my phone in order to keep track of my progress, but given the fact that there was a 50-50 chance I'd be discovered, it didn't pay to freely broadcast my location for anyone to pick up. I had friends who could pick a wireless GPS signal and then get me a detailed folio on whoever was holding the device, so it wasn't a huge stretch of the imagination to assume the government had people who could do the same thing.

Eventually after walking a good four kilometres or so I came to my first branch in the pipe. I took the wider branch to the right, believing myself to still not be quite under the facility yet. I quickly passed several more branches from that point onwards and the tunnel itself was rapidly reduced to barely being wider and taller than myself. Figuring that now was a good as time as any to get my bearings, I found a ladder not far from my position that lead up and swung up it.

At the top was a metal covering. I braced myself against it, testing the weight and running through my options. After a minute or so of hanging around in the darkness I was reasonably certain that nothing was above me within earshot, so I edged up the covering just enough to peer out. The flooring around me was solid concrete, and I could make out a forest of metal piping around me.

I must have lucked out nicely I reflected, as I pushed the covering all the way out and sprung out. Definitely a sub-basement somewhere, most likely used for maintenance. I scanned the roof quickly and spotted a single camera covering the door, but nowhere else. I suppressed a grin as I surveyed the rest of the room – seeing as I was already inside the facility, it was nice to know that security was being done by the lowest bidder. Thank you, capitalism. The only interesting thing for me in the room was a mop and bucket, which I quickly nabbed as I went to check out the camera.

From behind I reached up and let my fingertips brush the underside of the camera, allowing odo to flow from my circuits through my fingers into the device. It was easy enough to get the basic grasp of the camera itself, but that wasn't what I was interested in. I pushed my odo through the cables leading out from the device, following the lines connecting this device to it's peers. After a minute or so of performing the Structural Grasp magecraft, I had built a wireframe in my head of the longest cable attached to the camera, which was connected to a server six floors above me. I could tell there were several more cables running off the server itself but my ability to shape and push my odo from this distance was already at it's limit – there was no way I could follow them further. Even the effort of getting this far was costing me – my breathing was starting to deepen and I could feel sweat beginning to form on my forehead.

Only one thing to do now.

I flared my circuits and poured the excess odo into the connections I was maintaining to perform the Structural Grasp, piggybacking a reinforcement all the way up the cable into the server. I kept pouring the essence of magecraft into the reinforcement, pouring so much odo into the server that all the imperfections in the silicon making up the circuitry began to fill with my odo, and then some. It didn't take long before my connection with the reinforcement upstairs broke, along with the server itself.

It was an... _unusual... _usage of reinforcement magecraft, but it got results. With that server down, none of the cameras in the building would be recording properly, which gave me a window of opportunity to get what I needed and get out again. Grabbing the bucket and mop I stepped out the door into a featureless gray corridor. The little stunt I pulled would at least buy me fifteen minutes, assuming that security were on the ball, and considering the building wasn't already in lockdown, I kind of doubted that. Still, there was no point in being careless, so I'd just have to make do with fifteen minutes.

I strode purposefully up the corridor, and took a left turn without thinking about it. I needed to get my bearings quickly, which meant I needed to find a window, floor guide or even a damn stairwell in a hurry. I rounded a corner and nearly ran straight into the next best thing.

A lone person, middle aged with a balding head, recoiled instinctively in order to avoid a head on collision with me. He shook himself, adjusted the lab coat he was wearing and looked me square in the eye, the surprise on his face at almost being run down quickly replaced with irritation.

"Watch where you're going," he grunted, extremely inarticulately. I sketched an apologetic bow.

"Sorry sir," I replied, putting on a meek face as I raised my head from the bow. He grunted, exuding superiority (that he clearly didn't have) and prepared to step past me, but I pushed my eyebrows together in order to fake confusion and halted him by continuing to speak. "Um, am I near the containment laboratory? My boss told me to clean it, only I got lost..." I trailed off, waggling the mop and trying to appeal to whatever sense of decency to fellow human beings this scientist might have.

Apparently that was the wrong thing to ask though, because he whirled around with narrowed eyes and decided to actually take a good look at me. I had no idea if a containment laboratory existed or not, but I needed to get myself going in the right direction soonish or I'd have to get out of here with nothing to show for it, and if they were going to keep a Vajra specimen here, it's be in some sort of morgue for secure laboratory. I kept what I hoped was a look of honest confusion on my features as the man gave me a death glare.

"That's not even in this building," he muttered, and I watched as his eyes swept my nondescript clothes – probably looking for an identity card similar to the one he had pinned onto his lab coat pocket. "And the cleaning is done by the screw-ups working in there," he murmured to himself.

I'd heard enough, unfortunately for – I squinted at his ID card – Dr. Cedric Boreale, and brought the shaft of the mop around with lightning speed, driving it into his head with a loud crack. The man folded forwards at the knees, which made it easy for me to grab him before he hit the floor and drag him into a convenient cupboard nearby (one thing I've noticed when I'm doing this sort of thing is that there's _always_ some sort of handy cupboard nearby – After the eighth time I stopped worrying about why that was always the case and just accepted it).

Barely twenty seconds later I stepped out of the cupboard clad in a white lab coat that was slightly too small for me and sporting a new ID card. Looking down, it was clear that white was definitely not my colour, but I'd just have to deal with that small disappointment for another fourteen minutes or so.

It took me another minute to find an elevator and take it to the ground floor (turns out I'd been in the second basement level) which deposited me in a small but functional foyer. Seeing as my good friend Dr. Boreale had let me know I was in the wrong building, I walked straight out the front door, giving a quick wave to the confused looking security guard who was too busy checking his screens to wave back as I passed him by. The second I got outside I knew exactly where I was – I had just emerged from the second largest building in the facility, which left the large building backed up against the hull of the convoy ship as being the only other place the Vajra corpse (and hopefully information) was kept.

Keeping my head down and my face away from the security cameras, but not hesitating for a second, I strode towards the larger building. I knew the guards would be more alert if they knew the system in one of their buildings was down, so any hesitating or suspicious behaviour on my behalf would draw attention that I didn't need. By the time I was walking through the front door I had ten minutes to get what I needed and get out again - a task which suddenly seemed a lot tougher when I noticed the fingerprint scanners inside the elevator that was opening for a rather large party of people, several of whom were wearing N.U.N.S. uniforms. I strolled towards the elevators, giving the one the military group had piled into plenty of time to reach it's destination, which was apparently the fourteenth floor. I called an elevator quickly, stepped inside, hit the door close button then immediately moved under the camera installed in the top left corner of the elevator.

Figuring I was already on a short timer, and one more camera wouldn't hurt, I quickly traced Kanshou, one of the Chinese falchions I was exceedingly familiar with, and drove it through the camera, slicing apart silicon and plastic with ease. As soon as the blade of the falchion had severed the cable leading out of the back of the camera I allowed the odo to fade from the replica, banishing it with an explosion of deteriorating prana. Wasting no time, I pushed open the emergency trapdoor in the roof and leapt out of the confines of the elevator and into the considerably more open confines of the elevator shaft, sealing the trapdoor behind me before staring up the shaft.

For a normal person it might have been a dangerous climb, but there were plenty of handholds and location I could balance on and bounce off, so I pushed odo from my circuits into my limbs and began to ascend the shaft, dodging elevators every so often. As I climbed, I idly began to wonder how on earth Ciel had gotten information about this place – it would be nice to have informants like hers. I quickly dismissed the thought – speculation was all well and good, but it wasn't helping me out right now, and in any case Ciel wouldn't be likely to want to share her contact's information with me in any case. It look me a good three minutes to climb to the fourteenth floor, but it allowed me to dodge the first set of biometric scanners at least. A ventilation duct about half my size was positioned above the closed elevator door, and although I wasn't a fan of enclosed spaces, it beat the alternative which involved forcing the elevator doors and going for a quick stroll as though nothing had happened.

I crawled as fast as I could along the vent, hoping to hear or see something useful. After passing over a few empty rooms, I hit the jackpot. From my vantage point through a grilled vent I found myself above a five story high chamber, and contained within a carbon-glass cell against the far wall was a headless Vajra corpse immersed in some kind of preserving agent. Down on the lowest floor was the military party – they must have come and gone from this level while I was busy climbing and crawling through spaces that weren't designed for human thoroughfare. The rest of the room was filled with what I could only assume were monitoring and testing devices for the corpse they had just lying around, and a bevy of scientists to actually work them (or at least that's what I assumed they were – none of them were wearing lab coats, so it was a bit of an educated guess). Over in the top left corner of the room was an observation box, which the duct I was crawling through passed over.

Aware of my dwindling time (four minutes left), I hurried through the duct, passing straight over the room I was aiming for and instead dropping into the empty office next door to it. Just like the basement I had pulled myself out of, there was only one camera in this room, conveniently faced towards the door and away from me.

Following the principle of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', I performed a Structural Grasp on the data cable leading out the back of the camera, thanking Alaya that in this day and age an isolated, cabled network was considered safer than allowing the cameras to communicate over a wireless network on the grounds that it was easier to hijack a wireless network than a wired one. Lacking time to follow it the whole way through the building, I instead traced the cable to what I assumed was a router for cameras on this level and forced so much odo through it that I'd be surprised if it was anything more than a sizzling gob of plastic. On the downside security would almost certainly know that something wasn't right now, so I was going to have to make this as quick as possible.

That still didn't mean I could afford to be completely careless though. With the cameras neutralised I still had to disguise my appearance enough that any description given by the people who I would have to talk to in the room over wouldn't fit mine. I quickly projected an ostentatious earring that I clipped onto my left ear (surprisingly enough the first thing that came to mind was a design that I had seen Sheryl wear for her two songs at her opening concert) and then projected a small sticking plaster that I slapped onto my right cheek. The trick here was to draw attention to those two noticeable yet easily disposable items so if they were asked to describe my face they'd spend less time remembering the features I couldn't change or lose easily, and more time talking about how I had a band-aid and an earring. Slouching a little to disguise my true height, I wandered out the door and straight into the next room, announcing my presence with a small cough.

"Hi guys," I said jovially as the three scientists in the room turned to me. "I'm Cedric Boreale, assigned as N.U.N.S. liaison." I paused there as I whipped my lab coat off and hung it over a spare chair, concealing the ID badge. "I need the presentation files and and the detailed supporting documentation for our friends down there," I finished up, stepping up to the edge of the observation box and point down to the gaggle of officers. One in particular, a brown haired man with a face like, well, a weasel, must have caught the motion of me moving up to the window because he turned to regard me with a cool gaze that I returned. Reinforcing my eyes, I quickly read his ID badge.

Leon Mishima.

Putting him aside for the moment, I was gratified to find that the men in the room with me were showing definite signs of panic. "T-The presentation isn't finished yet," one stuttered, clearly caught by surprise. "We were told it wouldn't need to be ready until next Monday," another confirmed in a worried warble. Their panic was good – they were giving me more information to work with, as had no idea what kind of information they had ready or were preparing at all. Asking about a presentation had been a shot in the dark, one intended to guide me to the supporting documentation in any case.

"That's alright," I told him stuttering man, my voice full of misplaced confidence. "The schedule was pushed up but I guess no-one thought to inform the guys actually doing the hard work," I said with a sigh, laying it on a bit in order to build a sense of camaraderie with the scientists and to keep them slightly off balance. "Just give me what you've got so far and the documentation and I'll wing it," I offered and their leader nodded quickly.

I patted my pockets down theatrically before waving my empty hands in front of me. "Sorry guys, in my rush it seems I forgot my crystal – can you throw it on a spare one for me?"

The lead scientist pulled one out of his pocket and shoved it in a data port without a second thought, and I had to suppress a grin. These guys hadn't even seen me until thirty seconds ago and not only was I going to get what I was hopefully after, I'd also manage to filch a crystal with some xeno-biologist's files on it – which may prove to be interesting reading. As that thought crossed my mind, the rhythmic thumping of multiple boots coming down on the metal corridor outside brought a grimace to my face. They'd definitely belong to security, which meant time was definitely running out for me. Fortunately my clouded face and quick glance at the clock in the room was translated by the lead biologist as displeasure at being held up here waiting for the file transfer to finish.

"I-it'll be done soon," he assured me. I nodded absentmindedly - my mind was elsewhere, working out my escape route. It was pointless trying to get out the same way I came in, as security was now obviously onto the fact that someone was crawling around their compound – which meant that I'd underestimated just how good the lowest bidder apparently was when it came to security. I had to get out fast now – disable cameras on the way to make sure they didn't get a holo of me, and hopefully be well away and back in a public place within twenty minutes or so. A muted beep indicated that the data transfer was completed, and the lead biologist wasted no time in ejecting the crystal and handing it to me.

"Thanks, I'll bring it back as soon as I can" I told the trio as I stepped out the door, pocketing the crystal, grabbing the lab coat and pulling it on as I walked out the door. I could hear footsteps up and down the corridor but couldn't see any security guards. Judging by the vibrations I could feel through my boots the footsteps to my right were receding, so I took off after them on the assumption they wouldn't look around. A cross corridor intersected the one I was hurrying down – I couldn't hear any footsteps coming from the path out to my left, so I quickly switched directions. As I rounded into the empty corridor, I noticed a closed window at the end – it was fixed to the wall with no opening mechanism, but that meant there would be windows in the offices against that wall. I quickly barreled into one of them, which thankfully was both empty and containing a latched window.

Wasting no time I threw open the window and clambered outside, where I enjoyed the fresh air for a scant second before stepping off the fourteenth floor like one would step down a staircase. With the wind whipping around me I traced Kanshou and Bakuya, twisting in midair to drive them deep into the building's structure. They entered the carbonocrete wall with all the resistance of wet paper, but they slowed my descent nonetheless. Accompanied by the dull cracking sounds of the twin swords tearing into carbonocrete, I surveyed the facility as I plummeted – and spotted the route that I had designated as my backup path into the facility. I grinned – it would serve equally well as an exit path, with a few modifications.

I gathered my wits and fed odo from an open circuit into my legs, strengthening them through reinforcement. Fourth floor, third floor, second floor, NOW! Pushing off the wall amid a cascade of crumbling rock, I launched myself high above the only camera in the compound that was aimed along this path and skewered it with a precision toss of Kanshou. I landed running, my white lab coat doing me no favours in the concealment game, but I couldn't afford to lose it and leave something to identify me with. Out in my peripheral vision I spotted movement, but it was slow and sluggish compared to the speeds I was pushing myself to. The compound wall loomed for a second before I leapt onto it with a reinforced bound, used the wall as a vault to push myself up into a twisting arc, and slung Bakuya with a sidearm motion straight onto the camera mounted onto the wall directly underneath me. I was rewarded with faint blue arcs of electricity for a fraction of a second before I completed my vaulting twist and took off again, bounding into the night well before the security could get it's act together.

Net result – Safely away, hopefully with the data I was after. Sure, they knew their facility had been infiltrated, but there had been no digital record of my identity left there at all. All in all, it was a pretty successful foray.

* * *

I ended up pulling an all-nighter that night. After escaping into the night and back to the zentraedi mall I had met Ramaria at earlier, I quickly merged with the thinning crowds heading towards the station and ended up on a slow train back to Island One. My first order of business was getting rid of the lab coat and ID card that had allowed me to bluff my way through the facility. That was easily achieved with a quick stop in a convenience store - some lighter fluid, a lighter and a box of cheap cigarettes later, I had the beginnings of a small fire ready to go in a small plastic bag. It didn't take long for me to find a back alley with an empty dumpster in it, which I then proceeded to use to hold a small bonfire, using the lab coat and ID card as fuel. After I put the fire out I grabbed up most of the ashes and made my way to Griffith Park, where on the way, I had 'accidentally' dropped most of the ashes to scatter in the wind.

Once that little errand was run, my next port of call was a nondescript net bar. Taking the crystal back to base and using my terminal was probably not the smartest idea, as I had no idea what kind of tracking could be implemented through either the crystal itself or the files on it, and I certainly didn't have the skills to disable anything like that anyway. The net cafe was part of a fallback system I'd devised many years ago when it came to dealing with sensitive data - process it on a public computer. Sure, they might know where you'd been, but hundreds of people passed through places like that every day – it made it considerably harder to trace than 'oh, it was accessed by a computer that's only ever used by a guy called Shirou'.

I had scanned the information quickly, but there was far to much for me to process in the scant half hour I had paid for terminal usage. I quickly pulled up all the written reports I could and copied the text from each file before dumping it all into a new text file I had created in an outdated file format. Probably the most useful information there was the hardest to take out with me though – the half-finished presentation I was given was basically a giant cheat sheet regarding giant alien biology and postulations.

Unfortunately, the government seemed to have less of an idea about the Vajra than I had hoped. Included in the presentation was a holo of the large type Vajra, very similar to the one I had been given during my S.M.S. induction, only with less question marks and more solid facts. I really wanted to take the holo with me, but I couldn't figure out how to safely take it from the file it was resting in. I know I'd definitely gotten better with computers over the years, but that was mostly limited to working with the onboard computers of variable fighters and using the net to gather information. A lot of complicated stuff I usually ended up, well, outsourcing to a few trusted people, but I none of them lived on Frontier or anywhere in range really. Still, I tried my best to memorise the locations marked on the holo as being disabling or kill shots (perhaps the best one to hit was in the upper left chest area – the researchers had marked it as the location of the organ that generated imitation missiles and was therefore susceptible to an accidental cooking off).

Once I had all the data I could pull shoved into the one file I was making, I loaded it onto a second crystal I had purchased at the counter when I paid for my time on the public terminal and took it out, taking care to leave the crystal I'd 'permanently borrowed' from the xeno-biology facility behind. With some luck some stickybeak would steal it and catch the blame for the intrusion, diverting attention from me.

Now being as certain that I'd electronically covered my tracks as much as I was able, I ended up on the last train out towards the Quarter. The guard on duty held me up for a few minutes as we exchanged anecdotes about how nice Island Three was to visit before he let me go with a smile and a wave. Once I was happily ensconced in my room I fired up my terminal and browsed through the collection of mail that had built up during the day while I was out. Most got trashed, but a hilarious one sent from Bobby was saved from the electronic graveyard – contained within was a single image of Saotome passed out on a locker room bench sporting a thick layer of makeup and tied aside hair. The combination of Saotome's natural feminine looks and the overdone makeup reminded me of a drag queen, completely at odds with his normally over aggressive personality. I snickered involuntarily and quickly filed the photo in the folder I'd put together on him. (After I'd looked into his background, I finally figured out why he was able to read me better than anyone else here – he was the only son of a famous Kabuki actor and was raised from birth to be an actor. With that kind of background it made sense that he'd be particularly good at picking a constructed character like the one I was putting on for the benefit of the guys I worked with from a natural personality.)

After that I spent the rest of the night poring over the information I'd lifted. By the time seven o'clock had rolled around, I was feeling a little worse for wear physically and incredibly out of my depth mentally – I had next to no appreciation for pure biology and as a result understood very little of the details. Perhaps the biggest bombshell I'd been able to tease from the data was the fact that the Vajra didn't have a brain similar to ours at all. They had a very rudimentary central nervous system driven by a small organ in their heads, but there apparently wasn't enough mass in that organ to allow the Vajra to control itself. That lead into what appeared to be two different schools of thought on the matter at the facility. The first was that the Vajra were somehow being controlled by an unknown method and were actually biological weapons created by either humans or another race. Given that I knew the Vajra communicated using some sort of magecraft, I fell into this camp rather than the alternative view that the Vajra biology was just simply so alien to us we just didn't understand how they operated at this current level of research.

As I soberly made my way to breakfast, I was more and more worried that someone on Frontier knew more about the Vajra than they were willing to let on to the rest of us.

* * *

Sunday morning rolled around, and despite the fact Saotome's exam was on later in the afternoon, I found myself calling up Ranka in order to catch up with her before the pageant started. I had absolutely no interest in the outcome at all, but that _minute_ chance to slip a tracker on Sheryl somehow would make the otherwise colossal waste of time worth it. Thankfully the tickets Ranka had obtained for me and Saotome also included backstage passes, so we arranged to meet up quickly before the actual event started.

Naturally I arrived almost an hour earlier and plonked myself in a small kitchen area with a coffee machine, a fridge and a water cooler. Even better for me was the open door that gave me line of sight to the main corridor connecting the dressing rooms to the main stage – if Sheryl was going to be here before I had to get back to Quarter, she I was definitely going to spot her.

An hour later I sighed and stood up, leaving a cold cup of coffee beside me. It was a long shot anyway, and seeing as Sheryl hadn't shown up, it was time to say hi to Ranka before heading back to Quarter to watch Saotome's practical. Ranka apparently didn't want to be found though, short of poking my head into the dressing rooms, (which was certain to cause more fuss than it was worth) I just couldn't find her. What a colossal waste of time this trip had been indeed.

Giving up on finding the green haired girl, I picked my way through a backstage area filled with junk, and cut down a set of fire stairs. At the bottom of the flight I was making my way down was, surprise surprise, Ranka Lee, wearing a pink bikini that in some circles could be considered cute (definitely not my circle though). The girl was sitting with her back to the wall and knees hugged up to her chest, looking thoroughly despondent. I rolled my eyes and muttered an oath about my luck, which must have caught Ranka's attention, as her head snapped up to look at me.

"Hi Ranka," I said, putting a warm smile on my face, "ready for your big day?"

Before the girl could answer though, a chime issued from the plush animal phone she had (seriously, I had no idea what kind of animal that was supposed to be. It was green, with red beady eyes and four short limbs, so the closest idea I could come up with was a frog, which I was fairly sure it wasn't). She fumbled the phone, but caught it with a loud squeak before it had traveled too far and anxiously glanced at the holo screen projected over the plush animal. By that time I had closed in to within a footstep of her, making it easy to read her phone from above. The mail itself was from Saotome - 'I'm here. Win!'

The effect those words of encouragement had on the young girl was obvious, even though I couldn't see her face from my vantage point. Her slouched shoulders straightened and her head came up slightly. I sunk into a crouch so as to better talk to the young girl, who I clearly see smiling and blushing now. Small clicking sounds echoed closer on the concrete floor, indicating that someone was approaching, but that was of little concern at the moment

It honestly surprised me that such simple words could elicit such a reaction. She either would win or wouldn't based on her merits, yet the effect on her self confidence upon reading those words was well beyond what I would have felt in the same situation. I tried to put myself in her shoes by imagining how I would have felt if I had reverted to her age – and found I just couldn't visualise those emotions. I shook my head slightly – there was an innocence within her that I just couldn't sympathize with, at least in my current state.

"He's watching," Ranka babbled happily, and I maintained my smile. "Now I think I'm ready," she continued, finally answering the question I posed earlier. Maintaining the smile, I quickly debated whether or not to tell Ranka that he'd probably be in a variable fighter before she even made it to the stage. In the end, I decided to treat her as an adult.

"About that," I said, scratching the back of my head and putting on an outward air of sheepishness, "he's actually due for a surprise practical test for S.M.S. Today. I don't think he'll be able to watch you perform. It's why I wanted to meet you before you went on stage," I offered, and saw her shoulders drop a little. The happy smile remained on her face though.

"Thanks for telling me," she said, a sliver of sadness infused in her voice.

The footsteps that had been bearing down on us stopped, and a melodical lilt echoed from the steps of the flight below us.

"A little lost girl and her wayward protector?"

I knew that voice instantly. Looked like all my hard work sitting in a kitchen was about to pay off. That was definitely Sheryl's voice. Suppressing a smile, I slipped a hand into my pocket as I unfolded myself back up to my full height and turned around.

Ranka had none of my self control though, and neither did she recognise Sheryl's voice straight away. Her green hair flared up angrily and she leapt to her feet in a fit of righteous anger.

"No," she said sharply. "I'm -" and then the penny dropped for the younger Lee sibling, who had apparently just realised she was just about to give a verbal blasting to the galactic fairy herself. Idly, I wondered what had happened to Ranka before I met her – there had to be some reason she was uncharacteristically snappy. While Ranka was recovering her composure I stepped into the conversational void.

"Sheryl," I said evenly, nodding in greeting to the diva who had the the great 'honour' of sharing an emergency bolthole with. "Ms. O'Connor," I said to the blue haired, green suited manager standing quietly behind her.

"Shirou," Sheryl responded, mimicking my greeting with just a hint of a smile. Grace simply smiled and inclined her head at me, which I supposed was all I was going to get from the collected manager.

Sheryl diverted her attention away from me and back to the Ranka. "You'd better get going then," Sheryl told the young girl in a warm tone. "This is the gate to your dreams, but you've only set one foot on the stairway," she continued. I could spot the diva readying another inspirational monologue and restrained the urge to bury my head in my hand. Instead, I kept listening with a straight face, all the while thumbing the tracker hidden in my pocket.

"If you want to chase me, don't hesitate. Continue on!" At this point the pink haired songstress whipped off a pair of spectacles in an overly dramatic fashion (I'm pretty sure they were fake, I certainly hadn't seen her with any corrective eyewear up until then). Ranka had lapped it up though – the look on her face was pure determination. Certain that my face was hidden from Ranka's line of sight, I let a small grin creep onto my features.

'Right!" the young green haired girl confirmed enthusiastically and purposefully strode up the stairs towards the stage. The three of us watched Ranka until she was out of eyesight, then turned back to each other.

"Impressive," I said, complimenting the galactic fairy as she distractedly slipped the spectacles into a handbag. "You should take up motivational speaking when you retire from singing."

"Well, someone had to cheer her up after you delivered the bad news," she said with a superior smile. I shrugged, pulling my hand out of my pocket and keeping the tracker well hidden.

"She would have found out somehow," I noted and suddenly it was Sheryl's turn to shrug. "Anyway," I continued, "I'd better get back to the Quarter. It's going to be a busy afternoon. Sheryl. Ms. O'Connor," I finished politely, nodding to both ladies in turn before walking past them and heading down the stairs. As I passed Sheryl, I brushed her bag lightly with my right hand and released the tracker. I couldn't confirm it had landed properly in the bag without raising suspicion, but it was as good as I was going to get today.

* * *

I made it onto the bridge of the Quarter just as Saotome, Mikhail and Luca had reached the designated training area. After placing a quick wager on the Pixie squadron to come out victorious (a fairly safe bet in my mind, but the sentiment wasn't shared by Ozma, Bobby or Lam who had bet against Captain Wilder and myself), the game was on. Our tracking systems had the Pixies closing in fast on the asteroid where the truncated Skull squadron and trainee were examining the remains of a dead zentraedi (apparently the asteroid field was an old old _old_ zentraedi battlefield) and in general just acting like sitting ducks.

Eventually Luca must have picked up the heat signatures of the Pixies, and they hurriedly broke, trying to split the firepower of the incoming wing of Queadluun suits. It appeared that Klan was having none of that though, as her suit and Nene's made a beeline straight after Saotome's Messiah, while Ramaria's suit peeled off to run interference against both Luca and Mikhail. It was a fairly sound plan – Luca wasn't much of a frontliner and Mikhail wouldn't be able to provide supporting fire if Ramaria was up in his grill and keeping him on the move. On the other side of the equation, it would be a classic double teaming of Klan and Nene against the lone Saotome.

I felt that my money was fairly safe.

Nene's gray suit rocketed into lead position behind Saotome and she opened fire with the paint cannon shells she was currently equipped with. Saotome had already anticipated that movement though and was sliding out of the line of fire, pulling even deeper the asteroid field. Nene followed closely, backed up by Klan at a more reasonable range.

A quick glance at another tactical holo indicated that Mikhail and Luca were being successfully stalled by Ramaria, her experience offset by the fact she had to cover two units. Every time she looked to make a kill, the one she wasn't focusing on forced her out of position, with the net result being a stalemate.

Saotome on the other hand looked considerably out his depth as Nene closed in hard and fast. Don't get me wrong, he was trying every trick he had, and had thus far managed to avoid becoming the flying splatter of paint. At one point he had managed a tricky transformation to GERWALK mode and bled enough speed that he had actually gotten behind the young meltran pilot for a second, but a quick loop had enabled Nene to pull back into position and take advantage of his lack of momentum, forcing him back into fighter mode and back onto the defensive as she continued the chase.

Meanwhile Klan was still following along at a reasonable distance. I got the feeling she was waiting for Nene to flush him out in the open so she could get an easy kill, but I couldn't be sure. She might also have been judging Nene's combat ability. Nene herself must have been getting confident now – Saotome was running out of tricks, and if I was any guess he'd be out of this in a hurry. He sped past a large asteroid in order to get some breathing room, and I watched with an inward wince as Nene moved to go around it's opposite side.

Whether or not she had judged she couldn't safely follow him or was simply getting overconfident and was hoping to cut his path off on the other side, that was a bad move. She had let Saotome slip from her sight and unless the asteroid was almost completely hollow (not impossible, but _extremely_ unlikely) her sensors would be blinded by the tonnes of iron, nickel and water trapped in the rock.

Klan had also noticed the problem Nene had put herself in and pushed her main thrusters to the max in order to enter the dogfight. Nene continued around the asteroid at combat speed, but Saotome had switched to GERWALK in order to bleed speed and came out on her tail instead. To Nene's credit, she didn't waste time, instead hitting the defensive hard and trying to draw Saotome up to the rapidly closing Klan. Her twists and turns were bringing her closer to the Squad Leader, and Saotome wasn't able to draw a bead on her – despite the reversal in their situations it looked like she might reach safety.

I kept my eyes on the screen as Nene pulled into a straight line enforced upon her by the layout of the asteroids and grunted. Saotome pulled in behind, and with nowhere to go the meltran could do nothing as Saotome opened fire for the first time in the entire dogfight and landed three solid hits on Nene's Queadluun, the bright green paint marking her as the first kill of the exercise.

Maybe my money wasn't so safe after all.

Then again, maybe it was. The idiot had transformed into battloid mode and draped his gunpod over his shoulder. He was _striking a pose!_ In the middle of combat!

"Skull Five, one down!" His voice burst triumphantly on the squad comm.

The impressions in the bridge were split.

"Even in a battloid he looks just like a painting!" Our afro touting helmsman gushed. Ozma wasn't so kind.

"That idiot! I told him not stop when you shoot one down. You look for the next one!"

Captain Wilder had turned up the corner of his lips in a mischievous smile, while I simply grabbed the bridge of my nose between two fingers, rolled my eyes roofward and sighed. Maybe he'd learn someday.

I can only imagine what Klan felt as she swept in on the posing idiot, opening fire at maximum range on the Saotome's stationary VF-25. The only thing that let him get away from that opening salvo by the Pixie squadron leader was the fact that it had been shot from such a long distance away that he could recover in time. A burst on the manoeuvring thrusters threw him out of the path of the shells into a backwards loop – a quick transformation into fighter mode and he was away - slicing a path through the asteroid field on a plume of blue fire, closely followed by Klan's pink Queadluun-Rea.

The dogfight was even more intense than his earlier scuffle with Nene – with one 'kill' to his belt Saotome seemed more confident and willing to take risks. A wide sweeping bank was followed by hasty GERWALK transformation, putting him behind Klan for the first time in the fight – a position he failed to take advantage of, slewing his cannon rounds wide as Klan quickly slingshotted herself behind a small asteroid, coming out cannons blazing and forcing Saotome to peel upwards and away.

Klan gave him no respite – when he tried to pull the same trick he had done to Nene, Klan instead followed a looser path around the asteroid, keeping him in sight the whole time. Saotome must have realised this as he aborted his full orbit of the hunk of rock in order to pull his vector onto a collision course with Klan. His gunpod blazed, but the pink Queadluun had slipped to the left at the last moment and sent a burst of fire stitching through the void as he passed her, so nothing hit.

"Oh dear, what a flashy dogfight," Bobby murmured, bringing my attention away from the camera and tactical holos and back to the bridge.

"Kind of reminds me of a certain someone in his youth," said Captain Wilder, his eyes twinkling with mischief as he directed his grin at Ozma, who favoured the Captain with a flat stare.

"Well, for the sake of my money, I hope Klan lands a hit soon," I grunted, playing up to appear not overly pleased that what seemed to be easy money was turning out to be far from it.

Even as I said that, one of Klan's cannon rounds exploded into a swirl of paint on the port wing of his Messiah, and I grinned. It wasn't a kill shot, but the vagarities of the examination meant his power from the maneoevring thrusters on that wing was cut to zero, which would make him easier to finish off. It didn't immediately help Klan though, as he quickly broke out of her line of fire and dived into a thick concentration of asteroids in order to avoid taking more hits. I definitely heard a fascinated twitter of conversation from the bridge officers behind us as he did that, but couldn't quite make it out.

Saotome's trajectory had him heading straight out of the field now, and Klan had come around as hard as she could in order to keep the pressure up. He quickly rounded one final asteroid and was greeted by a gutted zentraedi destroyer – another remnant of the battlefield that area of space had once been. The kid made a beeline for the fighter launch deck, making a solid transformation into battloid mode as he landed, allowing him to efficiently stop, twist and bring up his gunpod to track Klan's approach. An extended flash of light split the vacuum as Saotome opened fire but the meltran pilot made good use of the main thrusters to dance out of the way before stitching a line of shells across the deck Saotome was using as support, throwing up small clouds of dust and ice.

Suddenly the bridge lighting changed to a dark red. We didn't even have time to look around before Lam's voice cut through the alarms.

"Defold reaction!"

Ozma grunted and shot a worried glance at the tactical holos. In space, the dance between Saotome and Klan continued for another few seconds before a cannon round barreled into the deck near Saotome's VF-25, exploding into flames rather than paint. The explosion hurled Saotome into the void, but he was quick to steady his vector.

"It's a Victor," confirmed Monica, completely unnecessarily.

Saotome and Klan stood their ground as the large type Vajra closed in on them. Mikhail broke the radio silence.

"Get out of there Alto! We're only equipped with practice rounds," Mikhail exclaimed frantically, clearly thinking the same thing I was.

The Vajra was issuing a clear challenge to Saotome, and his pride was surely going to dictate his response. Mikhail was hoping to get Saotome to see the voice of reason, but it appeared to be wasted effort.

Saotome was already pushing his battloid forwards on the feet thrusters. He brought the gunpod up to bear for a second before apparently remembering it was only loaded with practice shells and discarding it in favour of drawing his combat knife! What a_ moron!_

"You damn monsters!" Saotome roared over the comm, pushing his thrusters to maximum power and charging straight towards the waiting Vajra. As he closed in on melee range, Saotome began to telegraph a wide overarm swing. The Vajra responded by using it's greater reach to contemptuously intercept the striking manipulator arm and the leading leg of the battloid before using Saotome's momentum to swing him around. After building some angular momentum, the creature let go of Saotome's manipulator arm and brought it's now free arm around and across the leg it had in a iron grip.

The Vajra's limb crumpled through the armour plating of the variable fighter like paper, detaching it from the Messiah and sending Saotome hurtling out of the losing melee in a tumble of limbs.

"Should we scramble?" I asked my Squad Commander, who in turn eyed askance at Captain Wilder. The Captain shook his head.

"We don't have authorisation from the government yet. The Pixies will have to deal with it," he replied levelly. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the holos. Damned red tape.

Saotome had righted himself and was about to charge straight in for another round when Klan thankfully blocked his path.

"We've got live rounds from our recon mission," she tersely informed him via the comm. "Stand back!"

Saotome checked his charge and Klan cut off at an angle, drawing the Vajra away from Saotome. We watched a holo feed from her cockpit as she achieved a missile lock and dumped a dozen micro missiles into space. Smoke trailed the guided explosives, all of which found their mark and lit up the red Vajra in a flowerburst of red and yellow flame. The Vajra halting made its way out of the smokescreen and Klan descended upon it, raining cannon shells onto it's protective carapace. As she closed in, the Vajra made a swipe for her suit in the same way it had disabled Saotome earlier, but the experience meltran twisted away from it's grasp and swung around to pelt the stunned creature from another angle.

I took a moment to quick check the tactical holos. Nene and Ramaria had linked up and were quickly bearing down on the dogfight, but were still well out of range. Mikhail and Luca had drawn back to the edge of the combat space, while Saotome pushed his battered craft towards them. His approach vector towards the truncated Skull squadron was a little off, but nothing serious.

Meanwhile, it appeared that our Vajra friend was sick of being shown up by Klan – it had swung around to track her latest approach, deploying it's large back mounted anti-ship weapon. The yellow electricity building a charge around the weapon gave Klan plenty of time to assess the intentions of the creature, allowing her to dodge the shot quite handily. As the Vajra recovered Klan circled above it, landing on the back of the creature and bringing her shoulder mounted beam cannon to bear on anti-ship weapon (a part of the Vajra I had identified as being a kill zone earlier, but I really wouldn't want to shoot it from that close). A flash of fire shuddered the Vajra, and it's immediate response was the thrash around wildly, flinging Klan out into space. In this instance, the red creature recovered faster than Klan and charged up another anti-ship shot – one that Klan had much greater difficulty dodging, losing her beam cannon in exchange for getting out of the line of fire alive.

"The hit was too shallow," Klan grumbled as she checked her momentum to prepare for another charge, but was cut off as a Messiah in battloid mode cut past her at full charge - a quick check of the tactical holo confirmed that the suicidal idiot was indeed Saotome. His variable fighter scraped past a flash of yellow and then he upon the creature, jamming a recovered zentran weapon (where on earth he got that, I had no idea) into the wound made by Klan earlier.

The Vajra was rocked by another burst of fire – this time considerably more effective than Klan's effort earlier. The yellow beam punched right through the Vajra, cooking off explosions as the heat set off the stored imitation cannon rounds. Eventually the increasing explosions set off the core of the anti-ship weapon, the result of which caught Saotome's VF-25 in a single, violent explosion.

Then Saotome pushed his battered Messiah out of the smokescreen, and that was that.

* * *

Author's notes:

_Thanks for reading, for starters! Much more action in this chapter, much to my relief! Not much to say here really, just pushing the plot forwards. Shirou is definitely starting to get a handle on the true nature of the Vajra threat, so I'm expecting to see him start to cotton on to the Galaxy scheme soonish, with all the noir and intelligence/counter-intelligence shenanigans that involves. Alto gets bumped to Skull 5 because Shirou beat him to Skull 4. The Pixies get their chance in the spotlight, and I think it would be pretty harsh of Ozma to fail Alto now :p _

_Hope you guys enjoyed it!_


	7. Investigative Action

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 7: Investigative Action

* * *

Saotome's little display of ingenuity in scavenging the abandoned zentraedi weapon to finish off the Vajra on top of his ability to fight Nene to a standstill and hold off Klan for two minutes or so in a dogfight had suitably impressed both Klan and the Squad Commander – the young blue haired pilot was now officially part of SMS. That's not to say it was all smiles and handshakes for Saotome though. I got to witness a small stand off between Ozma and Saotome shortly after his battered Messiah was secured in the hangar. Ozma was suitably fired up over the fact that Saotome had damaged his bird charging head first into a fight that he shouldn't have been involved in, and blue haired kid dug himself a little deeper when he angrily argued back that the reason he was in a variable fighter was to fight.

Fortunately Ozma refrained from introducing his fist to Saotome's face in response, but the Squad Commander made his fury at that grossly inaccurate assumption crystal clear by letting the young blue haired pilot know, in no uncertain terms, that we were piloting the VF-25 in order to help protect the fleet.

Despite the altercation, the fact remained we now had a new recruit. Naturally, that lead into what I considered a suspiciously well organised 'impromptu' party to celebrate the fact. Within four hours of the truncated Skull squadron and Pixie's returning to the Quarter, the majority of staff not on active duty had slowly managed to filter out to the Chinese restaurant that Ranka worked at, Nyan Nyan, which had somehow been entirely booked out for us.

That had to be Bobby's work.

Despite my suspicions regarding the surprisingly well organised exodus from Quarter, as far as parties went, this one was quite enjoyable. The food was excellent (I got to give the chef my regards in person this time), the company was quite nice (having managed to find myself at a table with Robbs, Nene, Ramaria and a few of their ground crew) and the entertainment was downright incredible (what with Klan chasing Mikhail around the shop almost constantly for twenty minutes after the main course).

Apart from Ramaria putting down a couple of pints our table was fairly quiet, which worked for me – I think the last time I'd gotten some sleep was forty hours ago, and I was starting to feel it. After the deserts were finished the 'boring lightweight bastards' (as Ramaria had so charmingly labelled us, well on her way to intoxication), myself included, chose to make a break back to the Quarter. I was pelted with good natured abuse as I joined the growing group of staff making excuses to leave, and noticed with a wry grin that Ozma, Ramaria and Bobby were working casually to keep our new recruit from making contact with us leavers, presumably lest we fill his head with nonsense like 'it's ok to get a good night's sleep' and 'don't listen to them, go home when you feel like it.'

It didn't take long for me to break out of the restaurant, and I was idly wondering how well Saotome would be feeling for school tomorrow when a tap on the shoulder brought me back to the present. A group of us were slowly winding our way back to the Quarter and seeing how I'd established a bit of a reputation by now of being open and likeable (which goes to show how nicely I'd polished my acting skills over the decades), I wasn't really surprised someone wanted a chat.

What did surprise me was how the pink haired Pixie squadron pilot who had just got my attention had managed to avoid being dragged out to the after party by both Ramaria and Klan.

"Hey Nene," I greeted the girl. "Not out partying with the others?"

"N-no," she replied, stuttering, possibly because my greeting had thrown her off her own. "Ramaria and Onee-sama wanted me to come, but after last time I went out with Ramaria..." The meltran trailed off slowly, reflecting on previous events.

That silence allowed me to quickly pick through my memory. The only time I'd seen the meltran pair going 'out' was the time I'd met the two pilots a few weeks ago at O'Malley's, and whatever Nene was worried about was clearly a bit more embarrassing than being slightly tipsy and having to carry her squadmate home.

"So, what happened?" I queried, keeping the flow of the conversation going. It wasn't as if I had anything better to do with my time at the moment, although I was itching to get back to my room and check to see if the tracker I was fairly certain I'd managed to land in Sheryl's handbag had actually landed properly.

"You were there," she said reproachfully, causing an eyebrow to raise on my face.

"You mean the time at O'Malley's?" I asked as I turned to look at her, allowing a touch of incredulity into my voice. Her eyes danced away from mine as soon as I had made eye contact and there was a definite darkening in her cheeks.

"Uh-huh," the pink haired meltran confirmed for me with a nod.

It was beyond me how anyone (even someone as shy as Nene) could find being slightly drunk embarrassing, but apparently she was. I shrugged it off – it wasn't really my problem. She could still be shy and be a decent pilot and it wouldn't really affect my job in the slightest. Falling out of cover by acting out of character might affect my job somewhat though, so I kept moving with the conversation.

"You didn't really do anything to be embarrassed about back then. I think you should have gone out for the party," I gently chided her, putting a small grin on my face so she didn't think I was attacking her personally. "You could stand to be a little more social."

I wasn't really saying it because I cared, although the advice couldn't have hurt anyway. It's just that after a few false starts the people of SMS were coming to see me as the nice guy, and that seemed like the kind of thing I should be saying at that juncture.

"Well, what about you?" She countered with a rare smile, taking my advice in her stride. "How come you aren't going to the party?"

Well, this _was_ surprising – Nene on the verbal offensive. I kept the surprise from reaching my face with practised ease, maintaining my casual grin as I replied.

"I didn't sleep last night," I told her, punctuating the sentence with an exaggerated yawn for effect. "So I don't think it's a good idea for me to be up until all hours of the morning trying to keep up with everyone."

That was actually a true comment. Despite my magical augmentations, regenerative abilities and the patronage of one of the most powerful forces known to mankind, when it all boiled down to it, I was still human. I could shrug off the effects of sleep deprivation better than most people, but I still needed sleep to function. So the thought of wasting a night by staying out being sociable, after pulling an all-nighter doing real work, didn't really appeal to me.

"Doing what?" The young meltran enquired. Her tone was suitably curious and it was a reasonable enough question to ask, but somehow it caused a flare of irritation in me, for a reason I couldn't fathom.

"Studying mostly, and a bit of exercise," I replied, smothering my irritation. Nene nodded thoughtfully but apparently that answer was satisfying enough for her, as she didn't probe any further on that topic. Well, as far as going all night is concerned, studying probably has to rank right up there as one of the most believable excuses. Typically that was in aid for some sort of examination though, but still, what I said was true, if not very detailed.

"I hope it was productive," she responded thoughtfully, to which I smile and nod. "But I take it that means you don't want to spar tomorrow?" Nene finishes.

I continued to nod politely (being pretty sure I'll be much better served by catching up on my sleep).

"How about the day after tomorrow?' I offered back. "I should be fresh then, and it gives more time for your cheer squad to prepare."

The young pink hair meltran blushed furiously in response to my teasing and the insinuation of what her cheer squad _could_ do to prepare for the event. I must admit, I had hoped we could keep our spar quiet, but the whole thing was turning more and more into a show for the entertainment of our workmates with every passing day, to the point where Mikhail was selling tickets (to what I considered a _training_ sessionthat he had no idea as to when it was going to occur) and Bobby was attempting to cash in by preparing Nene and Shirou merchandise to sell.

Honestly, those two worry me sometimes.

Anyway, with our clash becoming more and more like a joke and less and less like training everyday, I was considering throwing the match in order to get one at a later date without all the fuss attached.

"That's fine," Nene said cheerfully, quickly getting over the teasing I'd handed out earlier - and rather inconveniently crashing my train of thought. "Midday," she states firmly, and I let a smile drift onto my face. Assertive twice in two minutes - that must be a record. Maybe she was starting to grow up a little.

"Done deal."

And on that note of agreement, we found ourselves brushing off the last of the holo advertising around the Quarter (A flyer for Sheryl's revenge concert - an event which had been hastily arranged after the Vajra gate-crashed her first live act.) Nene and I kept up the casual chatter all the way to the dormitory rooms, her enthusiastically, me acting enthusiastically. Once we said our goodnights it didn't take long for me to dive under the covers and drift away.

* * *

The next day I had off as part of the squadron rostering (which would explain why Ramaria and Ozma were so keen to hit the karaoke last night), so I didn't feel overly guilty at waking up late at half past seven. I didn't have much planned for today with regards to SMS work - none at all in fact. That left me with a number of leads to chase up regarding the Vajra, all of which promptly fled my mind as I pulled myself out of bed and spotted the black leather case lying against the wall.

I still hadn't decided what to do with that bow, which in and of itself was fairly indicative of my failings as a person. I had put the case against the wall specifically so it would be the first thing I'd see when I got out of bed in the mornings, with all the intent to actually find the time to critically break things down and make a decision one way or the other regarding what to do with it. Instead, in the past couple of days I'd found myself other things to do that constantly kept my attention away from properly dealing with it. Perfectly legitimate other things to do - but regardless, it shouldn't have been difficult to find the spare time required. Instead I kept running from the personal problem I didn't want to deal with in order to to deal with the duty I had been given.

I briefly considered sitting down and thinking about it then and there, but instead compromised with myself and pondered it briefly on the way to the mess hall. I was well aware how powerful an addition the bow would make to my armoury, but I couldn't reconcile it with my irrational fear (I _knew_ that I was different from Archer, damnit) that I would be perpetuating a cycle I wanted no part of. Probably the only way I'd solve this would be if I somehow managed to lose one of those ideas from my mind.

I shrugged off those thoughts as I filled a tray with cereal and sat down to breakfast. I had a number of things I could chase up today, but two stuck out in my mind as being the most important. The first was checking to see if the tracker I had planted on Sheryl was working correctly. That would be fairly easy to sort out, although it might be time consuming - I'd have to track the signal and then personally head out to confirm she was where I was being told she'd be. Without knowing her schedule or even what handbag she was going to take with her (I wasn't kidding myself, Sheryl definitely seemed the type to have a handbag for every day of the year), that could require a lot of patience waiting for the signal to move.

The other thing I was concerned with was combing over the stadium where Sheryl's concert was taking place when the Vajra attacked. It was unusual of me to have made an oversight like that, but on top of investigating the people involved, I should have also been checking out the location of the event I suspected was the cause of the Vajra targeting us.

After breakfast, I made my way back to my room. There wasn't much for me to do there - I quickly grabbed a camera and a bottle of water and tossed them in a rucksack which I slung quickly over my shoulder. Next up was the display I'd been handed for keeping tabs on my active trackers. It was a small plastic thing with a built in holo projector, designed for portability and ease of access when on the move. I quickly flipped the on switch and grunted in displeasure when the device refused to start - a quick trace of odo fed through the device told me what I could have found out if I'd bothered to open the case, that there were no batteries. Making a mental note to get some while I was out, I stuffed the display into the rucksack and headed out the door.

Batteries were easily acquired from a convenience store barely a block away from the Quarter and they joined the growing assortment of odds and ends in the rucksack. I ended up on a train out to the stadium that straddled the boundary between the Shibuya district and Griffith park - foot traffic was minimal as there were no big events on today, so it wasn't difficult for me to circumnavigate the structure and it's surrounding bushland. Unsurprisingly enough, there was nothing I could detect that would indicate magecraft was used - no abandoned mystic circles, no carved runes, and more importantly no lingering background of stored prana.

Being able to detect stored prana easily was one of my more unusual talents, or so Rin had told me back when I was younger. Apparently it wasn't something that could be learnt easily - you either had the ability to do it accurately and without thinking or spent a lot of time training up the ability only to be mediocre at it. For me, it was the former, and the fact that I could detect prana like that while she could only work the location down to a broad area became a bit of a sore spot for Rin. I had once described it to her during the Grail War as being concentrated wrongness across my senses when we were working together to impede the activation of Rider's boundary field. After I had more time to expound on the ability in a controlled environment, it became clear that a majority of the weird feeling I was getting was a result of the magus behind the field rather than my ability itself. When Rin created bounded fields the prana stores she was using to maintain them felt greasy, as if someone had lubricated reality itself in a very localised area, but definitely not the encompassing feeling of unease and rejection I had felt from Rider's efforts.

Regardless of my introspection, the fact remained that there was nothing outside to indicate any summoning rituals and communications had occurred, so I turned my attention to the inside of the stadium. Thanks to my quick jaunt here yesterday to plant the tracker on Sheryl I was well aware of just how large of an area I'd have to search, but at least this time I wasn't going to be constricted by the fact that I was technically only around to provide moral support for a friend. Instead I signed up for a tour (there were three other people going by the looked of it) of the stage, backstage and seating areas, but seeing as that wouldn't start up for another fifteen minutes, I ended up cracking open the batteries and loading a pair into the tracker display.

The device booted up silently, and quickly threw a small scale holo into the air above it of the convoy fleet. At this magnification it was impossible to make out any detail regarding the individual ships themselves, and the non-civilian ships were almost invisible. Superimposed over the largest ship, which I quickly identified from the shape (and handy label sitting above it in space) as being Island One, was a blue flashing dot – the tracker I activated and attempted to drop in Sheryl's handbag.

I placed my thumb and forefinger into the holo, pinching in on the Island One dot and then flicking them apart. The majority of the fleet markers disappeared off the holo as the magnification increased, the expansion eventually coming to a halt with all of Island One on the holo and half of Island Two and Island Three trailing off the back edge. I repeated the gesture, this time focussing on the blue dot. The holo zoomed in again, coming to rest on a roughly five by five block area that I recognised as being in the San Francisco district.

That was a good sign – it meant the tracker hadn't hit the floor when I'd slipped it into the bag. I thumbed a button on the unit itself and an address popped up above the blue flashing light, accompanied by a business name. The Ritz-Carlton hotel. I wasn't personally familiar with the place, but the fact that the tracker had moved from the stadium I was at to a hotel was a positive sign.

I turned off the tracking device and studied the hall I was in. It wasn't overly exciting, so I whittled the time away examining promotional holos. Eventually a short dark man in a suit appeared and took my tour group away.

The tour itself was comprehensive for the fact that every area we entered was given a thorough explanation by our guide (possibly somewhat too thorough – at several points I could feel myself nodding off as he explained the finer details of the acoustic panelling), and less than comprehensive in the fact that it left certain areas completely untouched. As such, the ample time I spent in the seating, the boxes, the stage and backstage allowed me to scan those areas thoroughly for any thaumaturgy – and there was no trace of anything. As I judged the tour to be finishing up I allowed myself to drop to the back of the group and simply hung back as the main group turned a corner in the backstage area.

Now appropriately 'lost' and free to wander around on my own with the semi-legitimate excuse of finding an exit, I began to make my way through all the areas that weren't covered in the tour. A trip downstairs took me to the basement area, which in my experience tended to be where people with things to hide tended to hide them. I honestly had no idea why – if I was looking for something that someone didn't want found, it wasn't as if I was going to walk up to the basement door, spin around and say 'well, there can't _possibly_ be anything down that there.'

Despite that, after half an hour of poring over rooms filled with old props, lighting equipment and other assorted dusty odds and ends I could find nothing of interest and headed in the opposite direction – up to the lighting platforms. It was surprisingly easy to gain entrance to the platforms, all I had to do was head up the first set of stairs I found until I hit the top level and follow a well worn path in the carpet (this area of the upper floors was apparently mostly used for storage, or so I gathered from poking my head into a few dusty storerooms along the way) that lead to a rather unassuming door painted in a fading red.

The world on the other side of the door was a complete contrast to the dusty corridor I'd arrived from. Instead of worn carpet floors, there were metallic lattice walkways suspended in mid air. Instead of beige walls, there were dark handrails. Instead of poor lighting thrown in almost as an afterthought, there were rows and rows of high powered lighting hung from supporting beams running near the walkways. Looking around, there were several things I could spot that would make this place a decent place for a ritual. It was dark, had a good view of the entire stage and seating area, out of sight for people below and only had the one entrance (which I idly noted was against safety regulations). Likewise, there were a number of reasons why this place would be avoided for thaumaturgy, the major one being the fact that it was likely very busy on show nights.

It was on my traverse across the spiderweb of walkways that I finally found something interesting. As I was striding down a metal grating walkway that seemed to serve no purpose other than to connect two distant light banks, a faint sense of slipperiness assailed my senses. It was very faint, and like all of my previous interactions with boundary fields, it was very very difficult to describe exactly what I was feeling. But nevertheless, I knew that somewhere ahead of me was something that shouldn't have existed naturally in this world.

Or so I thought.

I closed in on the prana store I could feel, but not see. Usually the effects of boundary fields make themselves known to a person as they cross into the area affected by the field, yet as I closed in on the source of prana, I couldn't feel any sort of wrongness nor observe any mundane signs (alarm chimes for example) that I had crossed the boundary. It was only when a spectral spray of light caught my eye did I realise I had been allowing my preconceptions about what I thought I'd find get the better of my rational mind. The prana store I could feel wasn't powering a boundary field - it was quite literally stored energy in a crystal. A dark purple crystal attached to a hook designed to fit through a hole in a human earlobe.

Sheryl's earlobe, I realised, recalling my inspiration for the prop earring I'd traced while infiltrating the xeno-biology facility a few nights ago.

Well well. I'd just stumbled upon an earring belonging to none other than the galactic diva Sheryl Nome herself.

I strode up to the fallen earring and crouched down beside it, intent on studying the purple crystal and it's mount. It was miraculous in and of itself that the little crystal hadn't fallen through the grating I was standing on, but had instead caught itself on the metal. A simple visual examination let me know that the gemstone was impeccably cut, the deep purple changing hue whenever I turned my head to examine the earring from a different angle. The mount was made of a simple metal alloy, probably something mostly silver if I was any judge. All in all, it seemed a nicely cut, if mundane, earring. Except for the stored prana I could detect coming from it.

Despite my many years now working magic, I lacked the natural skill and talent required to branch away from my specialities comfortably on my own, and lacking a teacher I had simply spent the all my time improving my tracing, reinforcement and structural grasp abilities as much as I was able. As a result, my knowledge of other forms of magecraft was rusty at best, non-existent at worst. I suppose I could consider myself lucky that Rin had specialised in jewel-based thaumaturgy - once upon a time, I at least knew the basic theory behind it. Dragging that theory from memory was a different matter entirely though, and I spent several minutes staring at the earring as I tried to recall everything I could on the topic.

It wasn't much. The whole point behind storing prana in jewels was to overcome capacity limitations in magic circuits. Only so much odo can be pushed through a magic circuit at a time, but by converting the odo to prana and storing it inside a jewel bit by bit, eventually a store of usable prana could be built up that exceeded the capacity of the circuit used to fill it. The process of completely filling a gem could take a long time, mostly dependent on how much the mage was willing to push themselves in order to fill the jewel - the more odo a mage converted, the quicker it would fill, at the cost of pulling reduced odo from their circuits for a while afterwards. As far as I could remember, releasing the prana from a jewel could be done at any rate - from an almost instantaneous release of the entire contents (fairly useful in battle according to Rin, and who am I to argue, seeing as she stalemated a legendary magus, Caster, using a handful of them) to a minute trickle of outflowing prana that could last for years. I was fairly certain they were inherently benign - the prana had to be captured and used as it was released, or else it was wasted.

Fairly certain.

I gingerly extended an index finger towards the crystal, took a deep breath, turned my face away as best I could and gave it a gentle poke.

Given the distinct lack of explosion and the fact that I could still feel all my limbs attached to my body, I opened my eyes cautiously. There was nothing to suggest I'd triggered any kind of reaction from the earring, so I carefully picked it up, taking special care not to fumble the damn thing and spend it spilling down to the seating below me.

It's curious though. I can't recall having ever seen a crystal quite this colour before, and it _was_ storing prana – something that I wouldn't have expected to see, given the general lack of magi around these days. Another interesting point about this find was the location - up in the rafters is an unusual place to drop an earring

I began whistling as I continued my search of the lighting area. If the crystal was filled with prana, it meant one of two things. Either someone close to Sheryl (or the pink haired diva herself) was a magi, or she had received the earrings as an inheritance or something like that. If it was the first possibility, that definitely implied someone near her was trying to call the Vajra. If it was inherited or gifted, well, that would just open up a whole world of possibilities from simply being a benign heirloom passed down from a magus before Space War One all the way up to someone controlling the pink haired songstress using the earring as a focus.

Until I had an idea of what the crystal did though, everything would remain conjecture. I was aching to perform a Structural Grasp on it right then and there, but my position was fairly precarious – if I dropped the earring now, it would be almost impossible for me to find in a timely manner in the seating below. So I kept it securely stuffed in my hip pocket as I checked the rest of the lighting area and the attic store rooms, but the only thing I found during the rest of my poking around was a whole lot of dust.

As I was casually strolling out of the foyer, taking one last glance at the programme holo's to keep up my 'interested tourist' image, my pants started buzzing. I shoved a hand into my pocket and fished past the earring, eventually prying my phone free. I idly noticed that the time read 3:37pm – midafternoon.

"Hello, this is Emiya," I spoke clearly into the device. The caller ID had registered as unknown, which probably meant it was someone from S.M.S.

"Shirou," came a testy reply. Ozma. "I've got an order for you."

His voice was terse and quiet. Must have been something important. "Go ahead Squad Commander, I'm listening," I replied crisply.

"Ranka got angry at me and ran away from home," he began, his voice dropping several decibels. "Find her, okay?"

I blinked. He wanted me to do _what?_

"Could I get you to repeat that Ozma?" I could hear the disbelief in my voice as I spoke, but I felt it was fairly justified. I knew Ozma cared for Ranka, but she was a fourteen year old girl. As far as I could tell, she was fairly well adjusted (well, minus the locked away memories of her life before the 113th Expeditionary Fleet was attacked), so if she was angry at Ozma it was probably because Ozma said something she didn't agree with and decided to throw a tantrum. Taking your own views instead of parroting your parental figure's views was a vital part of growing up, or at least so I thought, but for a well adjusted relationship like the Lee siblings had I doubt that Ranka running away from home was a very permanent thing.

"Find Ranka! That's an order!" Ozma hissed down the phone before hanging up abruptly.

I brought my hand up and gently pushed my face into it with a sigh. It wasn't as though the Squad Commander was stupid, so surely he knew that if he gave Ranka time to simmer down she'd probably come back quietly. Still, I suppose it spoke volumes of his character if he was got that put out about about something that he blamed himself for – always looking out for his close friends and family. There were worse traits to have in a Squad Commander, that was for sure.

I went to slip the phone back into my pocket, but checked the motion and instead fired off a short email to Ranka to inform her that Ozma had asked me to find her and that he seemed pretty desperate. Having considered my duty to that cause officially over, I put the phone back in my pocket and made my way back to the Quarter without incident.

Once I was safely ensconced in my room, I pulled the earring out of my pocket and opened one of my circuits, pulling odo from it to feed through the physical connection my fingers made with the crystal. To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect, having never bothered to determine the structure of any of Rin's jewels back in the day and I was slightly worried that any interference with the crystal would activate a fail safe of some kind. Still, there wasn't really another way I could think to determine the purpose of the crystal, which is why I was doing what I was doing.

The instant my probing prana made contact with the crystal though, I recoiled, almost dropping the earring in the process.

The structure of the crystal was completely alien to me - the only thing about it that I could comprehend was a few clusters of fused silicon dioxide tainted with iron, which I guess gave the crystal it's deep purple hue. The rest of it was a jumble of heavy elements (mostly erbium, neodymium and antimony, although there were dozens of other species in there), and there was a repeating pattern of them typical of a crystalline unit, however I couldn't recognise any of these clusters at all. Unusually, the knowledge of what those clusters were or what function they had didn't immediately leap into my mind, which flew against the results for all previous Structural Grasp's I had ever performed before. The prana I was sensing from the earring was locked up in some sort of helix along several of those different tiny crystalline clusters, and likewise, I couldn't divine it's function. In short, apart from not appeared to trip any fail safes (seeing as I hadn't blown myself up and the prana was still coiled as if for a purpose), I got absolutely no useful information out of that.

Which left me with two dilemmas. First of all, how to unlock the secrets of this little gem. Secondly, how to get rid of it. It was only a few nights ago I was bluffing biologists in a secure facility while wearing a fake copy of this earring, which inadvertently meant that possessing the real thing strengthened my link back to the intrusion. Probably the best thing to do in this situation would be to get the object back to it's true owner somehow, but how I was going to do that without looking suspicious ('oh hey, I just spent four hours searching through the venue you last performed and found your earring' sounded more than a little suspicious).

Which left me with some free time until dinner. I briefly considered spending the time at my terminal to just do some general background digging, but dismissed that idea on the grounds that I already spent the morning and a decent part of the afternoon on information gathering. I glanced at the upright bow case in the back corner of my room, paused for a second, then continued running through my options – thinking about that could be the backup plan. I considered the dojo, but I had already visited it early in the morning, and would be visiting it tomorrow for my spar with Nene, so I scratched that off the list. Which left heading to the hangar and assisting the ground crews. After a moment's hesitation I pocketed the flashy earring and made my way out the door. It had been a while since I had lent a hand to the ground crews, and Saotome's bird still wasn't combat ready after his skirmish with the red Vajra during his examination, so I doubted anyone would mind much if I went to help.

It was fairly mind numbing manual labour (I was mostly relegated to helping with the heavy lifting and riveting), but it lightened the load somewhat for the rest of the ground crew, so I didn't mind that much. Eventually I left the hangar with a wave and made my way to the mess hall, where I met Saotome just sitting down to his dinner.

"Evening," I nodded in greeting to the blue haired rookie as I gently slid my tray full of food onto the table opposite him. Saotome looked up from his dinner, and his eyes told a fairly straightforward story – he was tired as hell. Deep bags had formed underneath them and they had lost their usual expressiveness that I had come to associate with the former actor.

"Hey Shirou," he replied with a tired sigh. His face was slightly pale as well, which combined with his other symptoms lead me to the conclusion that unlike me, he hadn't been able to escape the combined peer pressure of Ozma, Bobby and Ramaria last night and had gotten next to no sleep at all.

"Big night last night?" I asked politely, and he nodded.

"I had no idea Ozma could sing like that," he groaned, poking at his food. "And everytime I tried to leave, Captain Klan would..." They boy shuddered as he trailed off, taking a overly large mouthful of rice in a hurry. Personally, I was a little curious – I knew Klan could get a bit mischievous, but nothing I knew of her teasing could bring a person to shuddering in fear at the mere memory. I quickly chalked it down to the lack of sleep.

"And then," the boy continued, surprising me slightly, "after an hour of sleep, I get dragged away from school by Sher-" At which point he stops, looks intently at me for a split second before his eyes slide guiltily away from mine. Interesting. Looks like Saotome let slip something he either shouldn't or didn't want to. For a second or two I just sat opposite him quietly, spooning some sort of horrible mashed potato into my mouth. Under normal circumstances I'd be willing to let that slip pass, as Saotome's body language was clearly pleading with me to do, in order to maintain the friendly and polite image that people in SMS had of me.

Circumstances were slightly different in this case however. Firstly, he was talking about Sheryl, which meant I might be able to push for some interesting information. Secondly, Saotome was already aware that I wasn't showing my true face to the public, so he'd be slightly less surprised to see me digging for personal information. Thirdly, being a newbie, he didn't have the ability to reliably spread talk about my character, especially compared to people like Bobby and Ramaria. Finally, a plan was forming in my head that would allow me to get rid of the earring. Even if it meant not being able to study it longer, it might buy me more goodwill with Sheryl in order to investigate her and her staff.

"Hmm~m?" I said, raising my tone and one corner of my lips as I finished the inquisitive hum, sending a clear sign to Saotome that I wasn't just going to let this go. As his shoulders slumped, I continued with the ghost of a grin on my face.

"What did you get dragged away by Sheryl for?"

I must admit, I was expecting the kid to fire up and try to shout me down, which would have been more in line with the image I had of him. Instead however, he just sighed and buried his head in his hands. Maybe he was more affected by his lack of sleep than I thought.

"She lost a damn earring on her concert night," the kid began, his voice sounding tired, hollow and resigned. "And drafted me in to help her find it. When we couldn't find it at the concert hall," at which point I easily swallowed a flash of guilt, "she stole a," a pause as he searched for words to use, "precious object from me and held it hostage."

Well, that made getting the earring back to it's owner fairly straightforward, but I could bring that up any time. Instead I was more curious as to why he didn't explode in her face over that.

"And you didn't just take it back by force? That doesn't sound like you at all Saotome," I noted with a touch of humour.

"The evil bitch dropped it down her chest," he muttered, and despite his harsh choice of words there was no passion in his tone. I was suddenly reminded of his face in the emergency shelter, straight after the power had come back on and he had just caught an eyeful of her assets, looking for all the world like a trapped rabbit. Looks like Sheryl knew how to play her target then.

I grunted in acknowledgement. "What were her terms?"

"She made me take her around the colony. Boring touristy stuff, you know."

His attempt to casually dismiss my question and the extremely well concealed touch of wistfulness in his tone made me think that perhaps he enjoyed it just a little more than he was letting on. Despite not serving an actual purpose, I was getting used to gently prodding Saotome for my own fun, and didn't see any immediate harm in continuing to needle him for a bit. Who knew, maybe I could get him to bite, which was always enjoyable, provided I didn't let it go too far of course.

"So she took you on a date, basically," I said flatly.

That worked. Saotome's eyes widened, his face went an interesting shade of red and he spluttered out a vehement denial. "N-no! I wasn't taken on a d-date!" By the end of his proclamation his tone had changed from surprised to irritated, and I let a controlled grin slide onto my face as I fired another shot at him.

"That was an awfully quick denial," I mused, watching as Saotome attempted to recover his composure by ignoring me in favour of returning back to his meal. "Most guys your age dream of getting a date with the galactic fairy. Didn't you enjoy it?"

"It was a pain in the arse, is what it was," he replied between mouthfuls of curry, "But I suppose it wasn't unenjoyable," he admitted somewhat sheepishly. "What will be unenjoyable is chasing up her earring before her farewell concert," Saotome concluded glumly. By now the passion was gone from his replies and his face had returned to the slightly pale hues of someone desperately in need of rest, so I decided to cut him some slack and we ate in silence for the next few minutes. I finished my meal before the young blue haired boy, who seemed to have fallen into an unfortunate habit of nodding off over his plate, and only my quick reflexes saved him from wearing a face full of curry on three occasions.

"Look kid, you need sleep," I warned Saotome as I prevented him from faceplanting into his food for the third time. The blue haired kid rubbed his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to bring himself into a slightly higher state of awareness, but there was little improvement in his tired disposition.

"Maybe you're right," he grumbled quietly into the half finished curry. "I might dash."

I nodded as he quietly packed up his half finished food, and as the kid was standing to leave I opened my mouth again.

"You said you were looking for one of Sheryl's earrings?" I casually asked, as I began fishing through my pockets. He turned to look at me with those tired eyes of his, which shot me a look that spoke volumes of his patience at the moment.

"Yeah. And?"

"Wouldn't happen to be this one would it?" I asked in the same casual tone, pulling the purple gem from my pocket and dangling it across the table so he could get a good look. Saotome turned, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping as he registered the earring I was offering out to him. Priceless.

"How the - where the hell did you find that?" The blue haired boy eventually managed to splutter once he'd regained control of his mouth. I felt a flash of satisfaction and allowed it to show on my face with yet another sly grin.

"I was also in the event stadium today. Sightseeing mostly," I explained in a matter-of-fact voice. It was probably best to keep the true reason for me being at the stadium a secret for the time being. "I found it in a fairly out of the way area."

Saotome nodded as though it was the most natural thing in the world, which struck me as a bit odd – my excuse was vague and extremely incomplete, and I expected Saotome to try and pick holes in it based off my what Mikhail told me about his need to know the details. It _was_ possible that he was starting to trust me, but it was more likely he just so tired he wasn't thinking properly.

"Anyway," I continued as Saotome stood there dumbfounded, "perhaps you'd like the honour of taking it back to her? Earn yourself some points?"

The blue haired former actor blinked in surprise at my suggestion. "What's the catch?" he asked cautiously, and I raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise.

"No catch," I said, laying on the honest Shirou routine. "I just figured that if she was chasing you around you'd be more likely to get it to her than I would."

Saotome reddened a little around the cheeks at that comment but still managed to reach out and grab the earring I was offering him. "Alright," he told me, "I'll catch you later. Thanks for this."

"Not a problem," I smiled, then watched in amusement as he waved over his shoulder on the way out of the mess hall. Looks like some of Ozma's habits were rubbing off on the kid.

That went smoother than expected – I had managed to hand over the earring and dodge a bunch of questions that I was expecting to have to lie my way through. Sure, that meant prioritising Sheryl even more as a person of interest until I could figure out the purpose of the earring, but that wasn't going to be a big problem in the overall scheme of things. I could feel a genuine smile form on my face as I cleaned up my own dishes and with no-one else of interest to talk to in the mess hall, it was time for me to get back out to the hangar.

Hopefully tomorrow's spar would go as nicely as tonight's little chat with Saotome did.

* * *

"You brought _popcorn_ Ramaria? Really?"

The peanut gallery was out in full force today, with the latest addition to the crowd of onlookers gathering on the edge of the dojo being the red haired meltran, who had wandered in with an almost comically large bucket of popcorn. I was kind of hoping that the exact time that Nene and myself would be sparring wouldn't be that widely leaked, considering we only set down a definite time barely two days ago, but when I got an email from Ozma earlier in the morning warning me of a debriefing after 'the midday entertainment' I knew I was out of luck.

It was still ten minutes until midday, but the crowd was already quite large, no doubt getting there early in case me and Nene decided to get started before the appointed time. If that was going to happen, it wasn't going to be by more than a few minutes – Nene was standing opposite me in traditional kendo armour, minus the helmet, warming up by practising her overhead strikes. In the dojo she appeared to be in her element, as despite the ever increasing murmuring of the crowd and her usual personality, the pink haired Pixie seemed to have them completely shut out and ignored as she completed her warm up.

I, on the other hand, was armoured in a pair of training pants and a loose fitting grey shirt, and was taking my time to greet people as they came through the door. Seeing as this had pretty much devolved into a meaningless farce for me, I reasoned that I may as well just enjoy the moment and try my best to avoid ending up the topic of meaningless shipboard gossip for a few days.

Which basically meant I couldn't let Bobby and Klan get under my skin.

So I was being social, smiling and just generally making sure that outwardly everyone knew that I was enjoying myself as I warmed up. It wasn't entirely my problem though – which made me really glad that the usually flappable Nene seemed to be in her own world.

After a few minutes Nene had finished her exercises. I'd been stretched up and ready to go for a minute or so and had been making idle chatter with Robbs about my chances. Turns out the pool had most of their money against me, seeing as everyone apparently knew what Nene was capable of and this iteration of my ID hadn't stressed my abilities with a sword, so no-one in the company had a good idea of what I was capable of (although Robbs did tell me in a conspiratorial whisper that he had his money on me). Nene's cessation of activities pulled my attention away from the conversation I was having, so I shot her a smile and made my way over to the centre of the dojo.

"Shirou," the pink haired meltran began, "are you going to be sparring in that gear?" Her voice was partly incredulous, but mostly worried. Good. That meant she was confident enough to think she could at least land a hit.

"Well, yes," I replied simply. "Protection limits my manoeuvrability," I explained neutrally, and on top of that I could reinforce my body against any strikes that got through my guard. Still, it wouldn't do if she wasn't coming at me with all her skill and power for fear of injuring me, a problem which I needed to solve. "If you'd feel more comfortable with me wearing protective gear, I don't mind."

"If you don't want to, I won't force you to," Nene said in that soft voice of hers. Unusually, her standard verbal tics and visual cues of nervousness were not coming out today, which put me on guard slightly. I remember thinking earlier that maybe the young meltran had a hidden backbone she didn't show often, at least if that meeting with her during Saotome's hand to hand training was any indication, but I had eventually dismissed that idea with no further evidence to back it up. And yet, here it was again, that hidden section of her personality that was never seen.

Well, outside of the dojo anyway. Maybe she felt more comfortable in this place, or more at peace or something, which unshackled her from her more shy social aspects? Regardless, I got the feeling she wouldn't be holding back anymore.

The peanut gallery had quietened down now as they observed our exchange - only only sound issuing from them was the occasional crunch when Ramaria dropped a handful of popcorn into her gullet. I glanced over to find out what was occurring and was not surprised to see the crows roughly split into two groups. On the left hand side was Ozma, Robbs and a small group of others. A handful were wearing white shirts with the name 'Shirou' printed on them just above a simple stylised print of my face, which reminded me somewhat of the Che Guevara shirts I'd seen being worn by political protesters throughout the past five decades.

On the other side, a far more sizeable group had gathered, lead by Klan, Ramaria, and our erstwhile helmsman and walking stereotype, Bobby. In contrast to my supporters, Nene's had donned pink shirts (apparently our colours having been decided by our hair colour, I idly noted) that had her name exploding out of the shoulder mounted cannon of a stylised Quadluun. Which lead me to the conclusion that Bobby had spent _far_ _too much time _working on those shirts. As I glanced at Klan, she gave me a wink and shoved her hand into Ramaria's popcorn bucket, liberating a few kernels for her own consumption. I shot her an amused expression as I swung my head around to make eye contact with Nene again - those eyes which were completely devoid of the usual softness they displayed.

"Rules?" I asked, giving her the opportunity to run this the way she wanted to.

"Ten minutes? Most number of solid strikes connected?" She offered in that soft voice of hers. I nodded curtly - it sounded pretty good to me.

"Ozma!" I yelled out towards the side of the dojo, "could you pass me a shinai please?" A moment later, a flicker of movement registered in my peripheral version - a shinai that Ozma had carelessly lobbed in my direction. I snaked a hand out and snagged the bundled bamboo strands out of the air. I briefly considered asking the greying Skull Squadron Commander for a second shinai, but decided against it. It was true that my usual style of combat involved wielding a blade in both hands, but I was confident enough in the outcome already that I didn't see the need in increasing my advantage any further and humiliating her in front of her comrades. Maybe if she was good enough and we continued to spar then I'd introduce the second weapon. Putting those thoughts aside for the moment, I turned back to the Pixie.

"Start?" I offered.

"Start." Nene confirmed, and her shinai came down hard and fast, straight towards my head, blowing away all thoughts of what a farce this was.

* * *

My shinai swept up to meet hers with a sharp clack, and I conceded ground as her shinai bounced off my parry. I was caught flat footed initially, but having said that Nene made her cheap shot off poor footing as well, so it lacked power and precision - conceding the ground brought me quickly out to the optimal reach of the shinai and allowed me to fix my footing. Of course, coming into optimal range of my shinai also brought me into optimal range of Nene's, and she was quick to try and press her advantage with another overhead strike, which I evaded with a sidestep to the left, bracketing my body with my weapon to mostly protect against a follow up strike.

Unsurprisingly enough, it came. I had raised my guard a touch high in order to invite a low attack, and again Nene's shinai swung in at me, probing towards my knees at high speed. It wasn't a textbook play with the shinai, but it was fast, powerful and controlled. Unfortunately for Nene, that was exactly where I was expecting her attack to come from. I shuffled my right foot back just enough to avoid the strike, then stepped inside Nene's guard, ready to deliver a blow across her shoulder. What then surprised me was how perfectly weighted the meltran's strike was - she managed to pull up the strike perfectly at where my knee used to be, and disengaged almost immediately. If she had swung with just a touch more force, her slight overbalance would have slowed that shuffle backwards enough for me to land the hit, and likewise if it was just a touch softer she would have been caught out of position. Thanks to her perfect application of power, without reinforcing my body I was going to be a fraction of a second too slow in my strike, which in turn would open me up for another counter.

Very surprising, I mused as in turn I pulled out of my strike and increased the distance between us. Nene had very clearly understated her abilities to me earlier - not only was she a master at kendo forms, she was well practised enough to read the flow of a fight and apply unorthodox tactics to take advantage of my openings when she could. On top of that, she was able to judge to a fine art the amount of power and precision required in her attacks.

The pink haired meltran was very clearly unwilling to give up her perceived control of the tempo at the moment though, and interrupted my thoughts by lashing out with another overheated strike, this time directed at my shoulder. I contemptuously flicked it away with the floating point of my shinai then brought my bundled bamboo towards her pink hair from the side - a strike which was just as contemptuously evaded with a quick duck. I quickly changed the direction of my strike, moving to follow, but by that time Nene had brought her shinai back across to make a parry. We both fell into a standard kendo guard for a second and and empty pause echoed through the room.

"Not bad," I complimented the pink haired Pixie, even as I was stepping into my next attack.

* * *

The issue, I reflected as I forced Nene to shuffle backwards another half step, is that when you're fighting against a shinai with only another shinai all the effective tricks for forcing an opening had already been discovered by practitioners of kendo throughout the ages, which in turn meant the counters to those tricks had been discovered, and the counters to those counters and so forth. Masters would teach their students those moves, who would then master them and experiment and teach them to their students, and eventually that chain culminated at Nene - she effectively had more than one hundred years of experience at her fingertips, and the many more hundreds of years of katana based fighting that modern kendo evolved from.

On the other hand, my skills with the shinai were based off a) being chased around a dojo by Fuji-nee in my teenage years, b) being beaten up by Saber during the Grail War for practice and c) my natural speed and ability to read a fight that I had been cultivating into a fine art over the years. In effect it was pitting my general skill with a blade against her specialised skills with the shinai, and we were stalemating something chronic. I had seriously considered picking up a second shinai, which I was certain would blow the game wide open (as soon as we weren't trading blows in kendo style, or near enough, I was certain she wouldn't be able to keep up), but out of respect for her surprisingly high level of skill (surprising to me at least) and my stubborn determination to score at least _one_ point at her own game I had refrained from doing so. Which at the moment basically meant both of us were waiting for the other to make a mistake, seeing as I wasn't reinforcing my body to improve my speed.

My shinai rattled in my hands as I deflected yet another overhead strike from the pink haired meltran. By now I had easily learned to read her opening moves, and I pushed into her guard, using my greater mass and reach in an attempt to bodily force her off balance. As she shuffled back again, my shinai shot towards her left elbow, and I deliberately over-extended myself a few centimetres more than I should have in order to invite the counter attack. Nene had already removed her elbow from the arc of my swing and was taking advantage of the gap I'd provided her with by swinging in horizontally. In a blink of an eye, I'd already reversed the bound bamboo implement and was drawing it upwards to deflect her strike. With narrowed eyes the Pixie halted the horizontal motion of the strike and stepped into my guard with her shinai driving directly towards the centre of my chest, so I leapt back a few steps and disengaged.

Again, Nene was showing off her perfect control. If she had have weighted her initial horizontal strike any differently, there was no way she'd have been able to effectively complete the manoeuvre she'd just done. We were already seven minutes into the spar, and not a single point had been scored one way or the other - at this point we were both just waiting for the other to make a mistake. Considering that we'd basically been going flat out for the entire spar, it was blatantly obvious that none of us would make a slip up based on our skills, which meant I'd have to keep pushing her until she fatigued enough to slip up for me. On that front I was definitely making some ground - a few strands of pink hair were stuck to her face with sweat and her chest was rising and falling heavily, whereas I was easily maintaining my constitution.

This time I took the offensive, sliding a half step forward, feinting to her left with a poke. Nene moved away to cover the strike, so in response I pivoted on my back foot and came in with a powerful horizontal strike targeting her lower right torso. As Nene's shinai came up in response I spotted the slip up I was looking for - the fatigued meltran brought her shinai up a fraction of a fraction of a secondtoo slowly, and it was lacking power. Barely noticeable, but enough for me to take advantage of it. Ruthlessly I pushed inside her guard, changing the angle of my strike to batter away her shinai, which clattered into the mat lining the floor, her hands still firmly attached to the hilt. Before her shinai had bounced though, I had already begun a reverse strike, and stared straight into defiant pink eyes as my shinai bodily collided with the guard around her lower ribs.

The weight behind my strike, combined with the fact she was already off balance from my disabling strike earlier, pushed Nene off her feet and sent her stumbling backwards. I moved up with the aim of scoring more points while she was off balance, but the sweat slicked meltran managed to turn the stumble into a backwards roll that took her considerably out of my immediate range. A muted cheer erupted from the crowd, which I ignored. Irrelevant compared to the fact that Nene had begun her advance again, and I fell naturally into guard.

* * *

In the end I added two more points to my tally and conceded none. As time was called a large cheer erupted from the gathered crowd, and the heavily panting Nene collapsed to her knees. The peanut gallery began to surge forwards, whether to congratulate me or her help Nene I wasn't sure, but there were a _lot_ of people approaching us and the Pixie definitely needed some space to get her breath back. I squared up to the crowd, gave my shinai a little flourish and shot a stern look over the advancing mob.

"Get back," I roared, with as much authority as I could muster. "She needs some space to breathe!"

The glint in my eye and the tone of my voice betrayed my sincerity, and after a few glances at the shinai, the crowd backed up, perhaps slightly faster than they needed to. The majority quickly left the dojo - it was lunchtime and there was money to be collected, but the other two Pixies and Ozma remained behind, waiting at the door. I wiped some sweat off my forehead and turned back to the young meltran, who was still on the floor and sucking in big gulps of air as she recovered. Truthfully, I was impressed. A ten minute bout at the kind of pace I was setting was slightly draining on _me_, and basically my peak stamina had only ever increased since I'd got myself contracted to Alaya. For Nene, she had obviously felt the drain a lot harder than I had (only just now had she recovered either the strength of state of mind to start scrabbling around her armour straps in order to remove it), yet had only made three mistakes throughout the entire bout.

That was dedication to perfection.

Eventually a heavy thunk heralded the lacquered chest guard falling to the floor, and the pink haired meltran greedily sucked in a few more breaths of air. She looked up at me, and I met her gaze. Her eyes were hard, accusatory. Definitely not what I was sued to seeing from Nene.

"You held back," she told me, keeping her voice soft.

"I did," I conceded. I certainly didn't have to tell her that, and I probably shouldn't have, but after the epic session we just had I felt like I somehow owed her the truth.

Nene simply nodded, confirming the fact. She didn't push further, and continued to pull in air for a few moments until her ragged breathing returned to a more normal pace. I offered my hand down to her and she quickly took it, using it to pull herself upright. As she completed the action, I noticed a slight wobble in her legs, but probably the exhaustion. I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and was suddenly struck by just how beautiful she looked. Not in a classical sense, but the way she was standing upright with her training clothes stuck to her body in all the right places to accentuate her curves would definitely appeal to anyone's sense of good aesthetic.

Seeing as she was upright now though, the remaining three onlookers decided to chance coming over to us, and I didn't discourage it this time. The micronised Klan literally bounded across the room to reach us first.

"That was amazing Shirou," the energetic blue haired Squadron Commander gushed. "I haven't seen Nene struggle that much since she was ten years old!"

"Really?" I asked with interest. By that time Ramaria and Ozma had finished their more leisurely stroll over to us, and the sound of crunching popcorn heralded Ramaria's entrance into the conversation.

"She's the kendo champion of the fleet," Ramaria noted wryly, her voice filled with it's usual gravel. "Or at least she was until today."

"Yeah, nice work Shirou," chipped in Ozma, only just managing to sound more masculine than Ramaria. "You certainly know how to lay a beat down," he continued, directing a meaningful smirk at Klan, who's eyebrows knitted slightly into a frown.

"Not at all," I said, spreading my hands out in front of me in a pacifying gesture. "Nene is extremely skilled, and it could have easily gone either way." I delivered the blatant lie with a straight face - while it was close, I was definitely in control for pretty much the entire bout. The last thing I needed now though were for my colleagues to start butting heads over something that didn't really concern them, so I made moves to head the argument off before it began. Ozma and Klan began to nod their agreement with my fabricated opinion, but a derisive snort from Nene halted the motion.

"No it couldn't have," Nene said, with perhaps a hint of self-recrimination in her tone. "I lacked the skill and fitness to win here."

I stifled a laugh – with the net result sounding more like a snort than anything else. That was extremely perceptive of her. There was really no problem with her skill, which I had to admit, was surprisingly perfect for someone so young. Her stamina was the only thing that let her down, and even that was still good. She just had the unfortunate luck of coming up against someone who could keep up the high pace of our spar for longer than her.

"Your skill level is exceptional," I told the pink haired meltran, transcribing my thoughts into words, "the only thing that separated us was your stamina, and that's really only something you can improve through fitness training."

That apparently wasn't enough for Nene. Her pink hair draped over her face as she went into a deep bow in front of me. "Even if you say so, I feel as though I could learn from you. Today has been a humbling experience," she said formally. "Would you please train me?"

Wow. I couldn't deny the fact that I was shocked. My mouth opened and shut once, but no sound escaped my lips. Judging from the amused looks being thrown my way by both the Pixie and Skull Squadron Commanders, my shock had apparently made it's way onto my face.

I was surprised because not once had anyone asked me to teach them the sword. In this day and age my skills were dismissed by my colleagues as being a being simply a hobby, because in a world of guns, cannons, missiles and variable fighters, being able to slice someone in half struck most people as being a mostly pointless ability. Even people who were also learned in the sword and lucky enough to see me in action never asked for training, recognising me as at a level that they could not be bothered putting in the hard work to reach.

Eventually I recovered and scratched the back of my head. "I've never actually trained anyone in the sword before," I admitted sheepishly. "I can really only do it the same way I taught Saotome hand to hand."

"That's fine," the meltran replied, her head still facing the ground. No doubt she remembered her first meeting with Saotome, battered senseless by me and being dragged out of the dojo. If that didn't discourage her, then I guess nothing would. Which was good, because the whole purpose of this exercise was to determine if she was skilled enough to provide my with an opportunity to maintain my skills – and if she was willing to step into the frying pan it was far better than having to coerce her into it.

"I guess I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning then," I said with a smile. It's always nice when things break your way, even if they are the small things. A crunch in the background reminded me of our company, but it wasn't really relevant.

"Thank you for this opportunity Sensei," Nene said as she brought her head up from the bow, using the traditional form of address for teacher. I mentally shuddered – I was no-one's teacher, and we were both benefiting from the training, so it just didn't sit right with me.

"Please don't call me that," I said dismissively, "I'm not teaching you, you're just learning off me." The difference was small, but I felt it was an important difference to make. Nene nodded in understanding.

"Ooh," interjected Ramaria, "Nene and Shirou getting all hot and heavy in here every day. I bet she'll enjoy that, won't she Klan?"

A wicked grin spread slowly across Klan's face, and in the blink of an eye the calm and composed Nene had reverted into a blushing, stammering schoolgirl, desperately trying to deny the accusation her squadmate had aimed her way. Looks like things were back to normal then.

"You wanted me for a debriefing?" I reminded Ozma, and the usually gruff Squadron Commander nodded.

"Yeah, and just let me say thanks for tripling this weeks pay for me." He clapped an arm over my shoulder and lead me from the dojo, beaming from ear to ear. On the way past Ramaria I snaked a hand into the popcorn bucket and scrabbled around against the cardboard, finding nothing. The red haired meltran rat shot me an amused smile and taunted me by turning the bucket upside down – nothing came out. How on earth had she managed to eat all that?

A few brisk steps and then Ozma and myself were out the door of the dojo. The last thing I heard as the pair of us rounded the corner was a desperate wail.

"It's not like _that!_"

* * *

_Author's notes:_

_Sorry about the late update, my flatmate got me started on Mass Effect and I basically gave that and it's sequel all the free time I had for three weeks, then I ended up out of town for a conference for another week, but progress does eventually march on!_

_Nene has officially established herself as being some sort of monster with the shinai in version of events, but still not good enough to match Shirou, unsurprisingly. I enjoyed writing that scene far more than I should have, and especially giving her a bit more character. _

_And Shirou, well well well. He found a vital part of the problem he needs to crack, but had to give it away. I did want him to hang onto the fold quartz for a while, sort of figure it out and be the one to give it back to Sheryl, but sadly that didn't consistently work with his character when I sat down and thought about it properly, as he'd be far more aware of investigative procedures than your average hero, seeing as how his job involves rooting out threats to humanity._

_Anyway, I hope this tides you over until the next update, which hopefully won't be so far away!_


	8. Assault Preparation

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 8: Assault Preparation

* * *

"So," Ozma began, after I had cleaned off and been lead to a small briefing room, "one item of note for today."

I leaned forwards across the desk I was sitting behind, wordlessly indicating to my greying Squad Commander that he should continue talking. So he did.

"Yesterday I was invited to a government research facility," he began. I tensed mentally, but didn't let any of it show on my face. There had to be plenty of government research facilities around, I rationalised to myself. Not just the one I broke into.

"Apparently it was broken into recently," he continued conversationally, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. Figures. Of all the facilities Ozma could have visited, it was the one I'd been illegally inside less than a week ago. To top that off, there was a possibility I had been found out and Ozma was being sent to bring me in. Sure, the odds of that were slim, but having to deal with that would leave a trail of innocent blood behind me, force me underground and cut me off from legitimate equipment for dealing with the Vajra.

"A non-secure government facility," I said, deadpan. The thick layer of sarcasm injected into my tone was part of my brilliant plan of diversion - appeal to the well known trend that governments were run by bumbling idiots. "_There's_ a surprise," I said, rolling my eyes.

Eh, who was I kidding. That was a pretty heartfelt comment, having seen _a lot_ of governments and politicians screw around with the lives of civilians in the line of my duty.

"Yeah," grunted Ozma in agreement. I relaxed my fingers, which had been slowly curling around invisible hilts. A palpable spike of _something _surged through me, and I belatedly realised it was relief.

"So what about it?" I asked him, continuing with the conversation and stuffing away my feelings for the time being. There was possible information to be had, and I was damned if I was going to waste the opportunity.

"I got a detailed target run-down from the eggheads there today," My greying Squadron Commander told me, and I leaned forwards over the desk, listening intently as Ozma relayed all the information he'd gotten.

Unfortunately, it was a wasted twenty minutes – there was nothing I could glean from Ozma that I hadn't already learned when I stole their data. He told me about their lack of brain material, the implications of that and then finished up with an extremely detailed hole presentation outlining the weak points of both forms of Vajra encountered thus far. Which begged the question, why wasn't he telling this to the whole company, instead of just me. As he was winding up, I voiced the question.

"So, why not wait for everyone to get back from school before telling me this?" I inquired.

"It's classified information, even for most of us at SMS. You apparently still have a decent enough security clearance from your time with the N.U.N.S. to get to hear this. Michel and the others don't," he replied simply.

I snorted in amusement, although I was hoping Ozma would read that as amusement at the situation in general, not the reason I found it funny. Decent enough security clearance from my time with N.U.N.S., my arse. That wasn't a part of this ID at all. It was far more likely that my contact in the government had noticed my profile passing his desk at some point and stamped some extra clearance onto it when no-one was looking. I made a mental note to pass on a note of thanks to the old man when I got the opportunity - despite the fact it was useless for me now, the clearance would likely come in handy at a later date.

"It's nice to know my efforts didn't go unnoticed then," I shot back with a self-depreciating grin, which got a chuckle out of Ozma.

"I'll bet it isn't," he said with a grin, and he got out of his seat to gather up the clipboard and holo projector. Taking that to mean we were finished here, I scooped up my own clipboard and an empty glass that had been filled with a vanilla thickshake when I'd swiped it from the common room on the way through to here. Ozma beat me to the door and helpfully held it open as I bustled out, and fell in beside me as I made my way back to the common room to drop the glass off.

"Got plans for this afternoon?" Ozma enquired as we strode down the corridors.

"Not really," I hedged, after a second of consideration. Sure, there was stuff I _could _do, but none of it was urgent (although the bow did spring to mind, but I guiltily quashed that thought) – if Ozma had something interesting to do I was all up for it.

"Want to play some darts in the common room? I'll buy you a drink for winning your little spar earlier," the Squad Commander offered, in an attempt to sweeten the deal for me.

Well, it wasn't the most interesting thing to do, that's for sure, but I had to pass through the common room anyway, and a few hours of my time could be well spent socialising and mingling with the crew, especially seeing as Skull Squadron was about to head into a week straight of eight hour stand-by duties.

"Sure," I shrugged, putting on an air of casual indifference.

It didn't take long at all for us to reach our destination, and Ozma made good on his deal by talking Bobby into making up another milky masterpiece that I was really beginning to appreciate our helmsman-cum-barman for. The common room was occupied by a surprising number of higher ranked members of the crew – huddled around a table and gossiping were Mina, Ram and Monica, the main bridge operators. At the bar chatting somewhat amicably to Bobby was the rugged figure of Captain Wilder, and poring over what I assumed to be some medical reports in the back corner was Canaria.

Rationally, I knew that all these people had junior members to take over from them during their off cycles, but I still couldn't help but wondering if people on this ship ever did actual _work_. It seemed to me that they spent a lot more time than should reasonably be expected on their break periods - but then again, maybe the times I saw them described the total sum of their breaks. It didn't take long for Bobby to finish up with my drink, which I hurriedly snatched up seconds before Ozma hustled me over to the dart board. There was absolutely no competition for usage of the board, so I could only assume Ozma was bored as hell and looking for ways to alleviate that boredom as quick as he could. The small grin that he was trying (and failing) to hide supported that theory.

My skill at darts was thankfully considerably greater than my skill at the pool table, a case of where my skill at flinging sharp projectiles through the air actually translated to skill in a peaceful activity. In the interest of not being a show off and attracting attention to myself however, I deliberately spread most of my darts around the board, sometimes surpassing and other times sinking below the score that Ozma was throwing. Over the board itself was a fairly poor rendering of a large type Vajra, or at least the shreds of paper that had once displayed the drawing. Overuse of the dartboard had put a quite considerable number of holes into the picture, which was almost completely broken up now. It was a fairly relaxing process when all was said and done, and the action of putting darts onto the bullseye reminded me of simpler days, when I was a first year in high school and in the archery club.

Of course, that just got me thinking about the bow sitting in my room again, Alaya damn it all. My mood turned sour as I potted away at the dartboard, having chose lost the first game, and now sailing steadily below the points the Squad Commander was putting on the board. I was really tempted to put down the darts and stop playing - but dismissed that as being an irrational fear that somehow _playing darts_ would bring forth my hidden dark side and turn me into a broken shell of myself, existing only to slaughter those whom had been determined by others to be a threat to humankind. _Mostly_ irrational fear.

Fortunately for the continuing game of darts, a distraction quickly appeared.

"Ozma. Shirou." Captain Jeffrey Wilder greeted us as he wandered away from the rest of the bridge crew and over towards us pilots. My eyes quickly slid over the group he'd left, and I thought I caught the orange haired Monica glance our way before turning back to whatever they were gossiping about.

"Captain," we both replied, in synch. Although SMS didn't require such titles to be bandied back and forth, the three of us had a heavy military background, and Captain Wilder typically exuded an aura that dragged the old habits out of people. He certainly looked the part of the grizzled old captain, that's for sure. Even here, the only concession he'd made towards casual uniform was hanging his overcoat on a peg by the door, but apart from that he was in complete captain's regalia.

"How do you boys feel about letting an older man join in?" he asked us jovially, unaware that I was easily ten years older than he was, possibly more.

"Not a problem, old man," Ozma responded, giving the insult with the casual grin I was becoming accustomed to seeing on his face. It was the kind of grin that let everyone watching him know that he thought the world was a joke - usually reserved for covering up his protective personality when it came through. "We'll scratch this game and start again at zero points each."

I nodded in agreement, draining the last of my milkshake and placing the glass on the table with a quiet clatter.

"It's rare to find a combat pilot who prefers keeping it non-alcoholic when he's off duty," Captain Wilder rumbled from under his well trimmed chinstrap beard. "Not a fan of of the alcoholic drinks?"

"I enjoy them as much as anyone else," I replied with a polite smile. "But that doesn't stop me from enjoying my milkshakes."

"Heh, fair enough," the captain chuckled, before turning towards the dartboard to take the first shot. A squint, a shuffle, a toss and finally a dull thunk heralded his dart sinking into the cork just below the triple twenty.

"Unlucky," commented Ozma, as he stepped up to the mark to line up his shot. The captain just shrugged and turned back to me.

"How are you adjusting to life on the Quarter?" he inquired.

"It's not bad," I replied, surprisingly truthfully. I had been involved with considerably worse organisations over the years, ones that didn't care much at all for the comfort of life of human beings at all, and the work culture at SMS was very friendly. "The pay is good, the beds are warm, the people are nice and there's a considerable lack of red tape," I continued, listing off some of the perks of working here. "It's not bad at all."

We watched as Ozma sent a dart sailing into the fifteen, just outside of the bullseye.

"Glad to hear it," Captain Wilder commented with a smile as I stepped up to the mark, dart in hand. I visualised my target, and imagined the dart hitting it.

"Do you think he really means it?" Captain Wilder asked, turning to Ozma to amicably voice the question.

'I think he does," Ozma replied thoughtfully, leaning back on a table. I snorted in amusement, and by that point in time I knew the dart was going to land, so I sent it into the triple twenty, just above the captain's dart.

"Nice shot," rumbled Captain Wilder, as we traded places at the mark. Ozma and I gave the rugged captain silence as he lined up his shot, which must have paid off for him, as this time he hit the bullseye. In turn, that illicited a surprised whistle from the Skull Squadron leader, who stepped up to the mark with his second dart in hand.

"So Shirou," rumbled Captain Wilder. "As a professional, are you worried about fighting the Vajra?"

"Not really," I replied, suddenly on guard as to where the conversation was going. "Why?"

"Just wondering," shrugged the captain nonchalantly. "I know most of the pilots and their thoughts on the matter of fighting, but you're relatively new and we haven't had much of a chance to talk."

It was my turn to shrug now – he had a valid point. We hadn't really talked much before, and to be honest, I hadn't thought it necessary. He was the captain of a state of the art Macross-class battleship and I was just a pilot on his ship. As far as the chain of command dictated, there were a few middlemen to go through before his orders usually filtered down to me (Ozma was the main one that sprung to mind, although technically Canaria fell into the same group as well, not to mention the operators on the bridge), so I never really expected him to try to get to know me personally. On my side, I simply assumed he was far too busy with other business to care about me personally, so I never bothered to trying to get to know him personally. Ozma took the silence as his chance to toss the dart he'd been lining up, fixing the mistake of his first shot by hammering it into the bullseye right next to Captain Wilder's second dart.

"Well, when I signed up, I must admit I didn't think I'd be on the frontlines against an undiscovered alien species," I told him as I stepped up to the mark. That was mostly the truth. I knew I was coming out to Frontier to deal with something big, and before I made it out here I was aware that the Vajra could _become_ big. It merely was one possibility out of a list of about ten or so reasons I could think for Alaya to send me out here. "But I guess that's part of the job, and I've got to deal with it."

This time I wasn't aiming for the highest points on the board, and after a moment of concentration raised my score by twelve points. I made an agitated face for a second as I turned away to maintain the show.

"You aren't worried that we're ruining a chance to initiate peaceful contact with them? Missiles and bullets usually aren't part of a friendly greeting," the older man asked me.

Huh. Who would have thought our captain was toiling under pretences of pacifism. As far as I could tell, he had little reason to be worried about how the Vajra were reacting to the way we defended ourselves, seeing as he received his orders from the boss, who paid our salary. Seeing as our boss was more interested in helping the government defend the fleet than making peaceful overtures to the Vajra, I figured that Captain Wilder would kind of fall into the same boat.

"Not really," I replied. "They had their chance to be peaceful when they first came at us. I don't feel bad for defending humans and zentran. If it can prevent the death of even one person, I'll fight."

The old captain gave me an appraising look. "Well said," he said cryptically. His statement was punctuated with the dull thunk of dart-point burying into cork. Both Captain Wilder and myself turned back to the dart board, where Ozma was fuming after putting his dart into the triple one scoring zone.

It was at that point that the broadcast on the main holo in the room cut to black for a fraction of a second. It was replaced with a placeholder emergency broadcast screen while some faceless voice informed us of an urgent announcement coming from the fleet President. There was a short cut to black again, and when the holo came back on, the image was replaced with a rather sombre President Howard Glass standing behind a pedestal in a rather official looking suit. Captain Wilder, who had been bringing himself to the shooting mark, stopped to give the holo his attention, along with the rest of the common room. A distinct aura of tenseness had descended upon the room as crew members straightened up, began to fidget nervously or halt their conversation. We could all feel it.

This was going to be something _big_.

"People of Frontier, I am Howard Glass. Today I have an important message to impart," the gray haired fleet President said gravely. I glanced quickly around the common room – everyone was giving the screen their full attention. Captain Wilder even went so far as to put his dart back down on the table.

"Please look at this," we were told. As soon as the words left his mouth, the holo cut to a feed of a red Vajra on the ground, menacingly striding towards the camera. The background made it difficult to determine where exactly this footage was taken from, but the lack of destruction and smoke indicated to me that it was probably taken fairly early in our first battle, possibly from one of the N.U.N.S. units stationed to defend Island One.

I glanced around the room again – reactions weren't really all that varied. Most people grimaced or narrowed their eyes, but that was about it. Everyone at SMS knew that something like this was coming, so I guess most people had already prepared for it. The holo switched back to the President in front of his pedestal.

"I'm certain some of you have seen this before," Glass continued, pitching his tone low. "That's right, this is the biological weapon that assaulted our Frontier recently." The holo once again flipped back to the Vajra, which was shown flying in low over the city before suddenly turning sharply with the assistance of it's insectoid wings and landing heavily in some apartment blocks, sending debris flying.

President Glass was providing an impromptu narration to the scene. "We have decided to call these object 'Vajra'," he said, the holo cutting back to him as he finished the sentence. That illicited a few snickers from the younger members around the room – the term 'Vajra' had been decided years ago on the 118th Expeditionary Fleet. The older crew members (myself included) maintained the long faces we'd been wearing since the gravity of the situation became clear.

There was another cut back to Glass, which almost immediately cut back out to images of – merciful Alaya! The image on the screen was dominated in the background by a dark crimson _Battle-_class Macross ship, severely damaged and surrounded by by swarms of dots that could only be Vajra. In the foreground were a pair each of _Deneb_-class and _Guantanamo_-class cruisers, desperately hammering away at the swarms on the flagship. Their fighter support must have been lost – I couldn't spot any VF's on the holo, which in turn meant it was probably only a matter of time until the larger ships were lost to the swarm tactics. A round of gasps echoed through the common room. Another quick glance gave away the culprits – Mina, Lam and Monica all had their hands up to their mouths in shock, whereas Ozma and Bobby's eyes had narrowed even further. Sadly, I wondered where and when that attack had taken place, and if the crews of those ships were even alive now.

"Our compatriots about the Macross Galaxy fleet have recently suffered a large scale attack at the hands of the Vajra," Glass said sadly, continuing his narration. Well, that answered _that_ question, but my mind whirred as it brought up several others. Perhaps the most pressing on my mind was what had happened to the colony ships during the attack. The footage shown didn't show any sign of the convoy, and Glass' comments were currently ambiguous as to the status of the Galaxy fleet itself.

The next thought to bounce into my head was about Ciel. What had happened to her during the attack? I hadn't received any communication from her, and theoretically any communications she sent would have arrived at the same time as the distress signal. In practice though, the distress signal would receive priority over phone signals, and it was possible civilian channels were shut down in Galaxy during the attack to save bandwidth for military communications. I flipped my phone quickly out of my pocket and checked it anyway – nothing.

Despite that, I wasn't overly worried about Ciel. The ex-Burial Agent was definitely a survivor, and would be even without her borrowed immortality. If there was anything left of the Galaxy fleet she'd have gone to ground and wouldn't leave until she'd determined what happened to Roa anyway, so my best bet regarding her was to wait until she asked for help. I quashed a rising impulse to head out there immediately - if she _really_ needed my help, there were channels available to her to get word almost instantaneously to me.

My thoughts didn't stop Glass from moving on with his press release however, so I brought my attention back up to the holo, where a fuzzy mayday call from an elderly officer quickly concluded in a burst of static.

"In response to this situation, in order that we may save our compatriots on Galaxy, and in order to protect ourselves, I hereby declare a state of emergency by my authority as President," the gray old man declared intently. All in all, I thought it was a fairly good public address – informative, to the point and appealing to the patriotism of the general public. No-one around showed any outward sign of appreciating the speech though, and with good reason. Things were about to get pretty heavy for SMS. Ozma noticed my open phone and motioned for me to hand it to him, which I did without complaint. He quickly brought up Mikhail's number on speed dial and put the headset to his ear.

"Michel? It's Ozma. Are you watching the President's broadcast?" Ozma asked quietly into the phone. There was a brief pause in both the phone conversation and the broadcast.

Glass was the first to resume speaking, but he didn't keep my attention. "As of the current time, Exception Clause B has been invoked in regards to all SMS employees," Ozma stated into my handset.

Several gasps echoed around the room, not just from the support staff now. A number of heads turned to look questioningly at Captain Wilder, hoping to find confirmation or denial of Ozma's declaration, as technically it wasn't Ozma's decision. The captain's gruff features looked pained for a second before nodding in confirmation though – so it looked like Ozma had correctly pre-empted the captain's decision.

The reason for the consternation in the room was simple. Now that Exception Clause B had been invoked, we may as well have become a part of the military. It basically stated that when our major contracting government entered a state of war or emergency, our right to refuse orders or quit SMS was revoked. There were a number of sub clauses involved, mostly to do with the number of duty shifts, but the reason the staff would be getting nervous would be because they couldn't quit the company anymore, whether to bolt or to take care of their families.

Not that it really mattered to me – I wasn't going anywhere on Frontier.

I diverted my attention back to the holo, where President Glass was informing the public of the details of our relief force. "A relief force will be dispatched to aid our evacuating compatriots," we were told, in the same grave voice he'd been using for the broadcast. "I have been in touch with the owner of the SMS private military company, and he has offered their services in the position of vanguard."

Great. We'd been volunteered to be first into the breech, so to speak. Judging by the fuzzy holo's we'd been shown during the press release earlier, Galaxy had suffered a fleet level attack from the Vajra – easily an order of magnitude higher than the skirmishes we'd been involved in.

"Following closely behind our vanguard will be a N.U.N.S. strike force drawn from elements of the 1st and 5th Defence Fleets as well as extra fighter support drawn from the 24th Marine Force," the old man continued. I raised an eyebrow. The 1st Fleet was the largest of Frontier's home defence fleets, while the 5th was a pathfinding fleet. If the 5th was already out in patrol in the general direction of Galaxy, it made sense that elements of it would be involved in the scouting and any battles, whereas we'd be providing the spear-tip strike to secure the region of space we found any fleeing ships in, with the heavy backup to come from the big guns in the 1st Fleet.

Ozma prodded me in the shoulder and I spun around – my Squad Commander was holding my phone out to me. "Thanks," he said, a tiny hint of true gratitude coming through in his voice. I took the device and pocketed it.

"So," I said, matter-of-factly to no-one in particular, "looks like we've been signed up for the frontlines."

"So it seems," replied Captain Wilder distractedly as the press release wrapped up on the holo screen. He idly ran his unthrown dart around his hand once before drawing himself up to full height and gazing around the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, his voice regal and full, no doubt drawing on years of experience in order to prepare the crew for our rescue operation. "The Vajra have attacked our sister fleet, and we've been drafted in to save our comrades on Galaxy. We will most likely have the honour of being first on site to secure and rescue what remains of the Galaxy fleet! It is an honour for which we must not be unprepared!" By now Captain Wilder had the attention of everyone in the room – he was playing to his audience nicely, I had to give him that. He was even striking a chord with me – I was beginning to feel that desperate urge to save people thrown into a conflict of which they had no understanding. I allowed myself to ride the surge of raw emotion running through my system – this is what I lived for, the reason I wanted to become a hero, the core of my beliefs. To save people.

"While the bridge staff and I liaise with the government to work out the battleplan, I must ask everyone to prepare for departure as soon as possible. We have no idea how soon we will have to depart, so I all I ask now is that you prepare for immediate departure. I will keep everyone informed on the schedule when new information is available." With that, the captain gave Bobby and other bridge staff sitting in the common area a meaningful look and strode out the door. Monica and the rest quickly hurried out the door after him.

The air of surprise in the room was rapidly replaced with a sense of purpose. Work crews on break quickly formed up, and Ozma and myself stared around the room, meeting the gazes of pilots from our other squadrons and beckoning them over. Once all the pilots in the room (all six of us) were gathered around, as the most senior pilot, Ozma took charge.

"First of all," he said authoritatively, "get on the blower to your squad commanders." First of all indeed – none of the guys here were leaders of their squadrons and no doubt Ozma wanted to sort out the flow of information as efficiently as possible. "Let them know that there's going to be a squadron commander's meeting in half an hour, on the meeting room in the third floor."

The three guys, one girl and myself nodded, but we made no other move while we waited for Ozma to finish up. "I'll get in touch with the other squads. Then after you've gotten in touch with your leaders, gather up as many of your squadmates as you can and get down to the hangars and help the maintenance crews prep your units." Ozma glanced around the group of us, and was apparently satisfied with what he saw. "Get to it," he concluded with a nod, and then we were filing out the door in an orderly fashion.

"Michel is on his way, along with Luca and Alto," Ozma informed me as we made our way through the suddenly busier corridors of the Quarter. "I'm going to talk to the captain in ten minutes whether he's ready for it or not – although I'm sure he'll have the relevant details for me by then."

I grunted in acknowledgement, and Ozma took that as a signal to continue. "After I've passed on the details to the squad commanders we'll have a squad meeting. I'll get in contact with you when we're ready for it. When Michel and the rest get here, get them to make sure their birds are ready to fly."

"Roger that," I acknowledged. As I had come to expect from our Squad Commander, he was quick to stamp his authority on the situation. He wanted to get the information about our deployment, but was savvy enough to give the command staff enough time to sort out what was going on at their end. His next priority was to get the deployment information out to the other squad leaders as soon as possible, which would increase the efficiency of the information flow later – and at the same time by getting a general order out to the pilots to prep their birds, we could theoretically be ready for any earlier than expected action. Finally once the information was out to all the leaders he could fill the rest of us in Skull squadron in on the plan.

Very smart, authoritative and tightly executed. It was easy to see why Ozma had the role of Squadron Commander in the elite squadron of the organisation. We passed a tee junction corridor and he split off from me with his signature wave over his shoulder, leaving me to continue onwards to the hangars. The corridors definitely felt different today – everyone I passed had an air of determined intent as they moved around to their jobs.

Despite the air of urgency in the air however, it _does_ take time to prepare a fleet for combat. Thanks to the efforts of Robbs and the other ground crew members, our birds were typically kept in good order between missions, and even as I was arriving the middle aged mechanic came up to me to inform me that my Messiah was equipped with a Super FAST Pack and ready for sortie. I had offered to help with the other Messiahs, but was turned down on the basis that we already had too many hands around – the head of the ground crew teams having pulled everyone down to the hangar to help out.

The day dragged on, but after the initial burst of intently frenzied activity, there was a lot of sitting around to perform. Mikhail, Luca and Saotome had dutifully shown up just on the far side of half an hour after Ozma had called them, but by then there was precious little to do in order to prep our VF-25's for immediate launch, so we waited for Ozma in the ready room.

"What are we waiting for?" grumbled Saotome, the contained anger in his voice clearly indicating that he was unhappy with being held back. I shared a look with Mikhail, the kind of look that spoke volumes about Saotome's understanding of the broader aspects of combat deployment - I managed to check the motion of dropping my face into my hand, somehow_._ Mikhail held my gaze for a while as we silently battled to _not_ be the person who had to put on the teacher's cap for the blue haired rookie, but eventually Mikhail caved.

"If it was just us, there wouldn't be a problem," Mikhail began, stifling a sigh. "But we have to coordinate with two other fleets, for both scouting and support."

"So what?" Saotome grunted, clearly not understanding the difficulties of working through the red tape that inevitably reared it's ugly head when dealing with governments.

"That means paperwork from the government, just to authorise the fact we're participating in an action with the N.U.N.S. fleet, for starters," the blonde haired pretty boy began, throwing up an index finger. "Then we need to liaise with both fleets to open lines of communication," he said, lifting another finger into the air. Then up came a third finger. "Once that's complete, someone has to come up with a battleplan, and with a civilian military provider involved with actual military action, that means arguing the details of the plan out with the admirals."

Every point Mikhail raised seemed to dismay Saotome, as though he was angry at himself for not being able to recognise those issues earlier. That was surprising - I was expecting the Saotome to get angry at the world in general, or perhaps Mikhail or Ozma. Instead the kid was getting annoyed at himself. I shrugged mentally.

"Finally, we'll eventually get launch permission from the government, and _then_ we'll be off," the sniper finished, raising a fourth finger and then idly pulling it backwards with his spare hand. The blue haired pilot reacted by forcibly trying to eject a door from it's frame using his boot.

"So we're being held back by government red tape," Saotome grunted. "There are people to save out there, and we're being held back!"

I snorted, mostly in amusement. Mostly. I did agree with his sentiment in principle, but it was clear the former actor was missing a few key ideas that people with even a few battles under their belt took for granted.

"You want to add something?" Saotome asked, as he attempted to burn a hole through the wall behind me with his glare.

"Sure," I said, casually matching his gaze. I suppressed a grin as his face turned even more sour and continued. "I want to get out there and save those people as much as you do. But let's assume for a second that we launch right now. Are you three up for a little mental exercise?"

Mikhail gave me a sly grin as he nodded in agreement – clearly the sniper knew what I was getting at. Luca nodded as well, but the look on his face was mostly resigned. Given his happy go lucky attitude, it was clear that the friction between Saotome and Mikhail ever since Saotome joined SMS (and I guess between Saotome and myself as well) was starting to get to him. Provided Saotome started to think with his head and not with his heart, I was fairly certain we'd begin to get along better eventually – but I wasn't sure if or when Mikhail and Saotome would bury their hatchet. Saotome nodded grudgingly, probably feeling peer pressured into my little thought experiment, but unwilling to easily give ground.

"Okay," I said. "We've launched. We're sitting in our birds and off to save the citizens of Galaxy. Where are we going Luca?"

"Good question," shrugged the youngest member of Skull Squadron. Saotome's eyes narrowed and his face could easily have been used as a picture to describe exasperation.

"To Galaxy, obviously!" the blue haired rookie said, raising his voice a decibel or two.

"Okay," I continued calmly. "We've just folded to Galaxy. Taking into account fold topography, it's taken us four days. All that's there is a burnt out hulk of the mainland ship and no survivors. What's the plan now?"

"Find out if they've been evacuated and where they've gone," grumbled Saotome, although I could tell that he was beginning to get an inkling of what we were getting at.

"Mikhail, care to field that one?" I asked our sniper, who was stretching back against a wall.

"Sure thing," he replied with an air of superiority. "Almost straight away we get a transmission from Frontier informing us that three days before we arrived at Galaxy, the refugee fleet from Galaxy de-folded a few hours of travel away from Frontier, with a Vajra fleet right behind them. Without us there, the Vajra wiped out the refugee fleet and caught the Frontier defence fleets with their pants down, so we got recalled. By the time we get back, Frontier is a smoking shell of island ships."

I blinked twice - that was excessively detailed. "Well, that's probably the worst case scenario," I conceded, "but the point remains the same."

Saotome clearly _had_ gotten the point, but rather unsurprisingly wasn't happy about being treated like a school kid. I watched the rage cross his face as he slowly stuffed it down. Although I felt he got the point, I wanted to make sure it stuck.

"Before you go into any battle, you must have it won in your head first." That advice was one of the most basic tenets of any true battle, and applied more to my case than possibly any other person alive. "At any level of combat, be it a street brawl or fleet combat, if you don't _know_ you can win, you should never enter the fight."

Luca and Mikhail nodded sagely. I felt finished at that point, but surprisingly Luca felt the need to add to it.

"Without information on the location of the refugee fleet and their course, we'd be going in blind, Alto-sempai. We don't know where to go at the moment, but that will change by tonight, I guarantee it," the curly haired boy told his older squadmate, injecting his usual enthusiasm into the remark.

Well, I suppose there was nothing wrong with spelling it out even clearer.

At that point, Mikhail's phone started buzzing, and I managed to entertain myself by watching Saotome slowly swallow his anger. I'm not going to lie – I was unaware that the human face could contort itself through quite that many sour expressions in the space of thirty seconds.

Mikhail's phone call was overly quickly enough. The sniper sighed quietly as he pocketed his phone and rolled his eyes back into his skull. "Briefing in ten minutes up on the third floor," he informed us after a deep breath. I nodded, an action that was mirrored by my squadmates, and we quickly packed ourselves up and left the room.

We ended up sharing the briefing with the Pixies, as Klan had been caught off duty and on Island Three at the time of the President's press conference and as such, this was her first opportunity to be brought up to speed. Ozma had done a remarkable job of throwing together the information he had prepared for us in the short time available to him, and with the aid of an old fashioned whiteboard, a hastily constructed holo presentation and a rubber bouncy ball, our Squad Commander had outlined the timetable of our punitive sortie and rescue operations.

Apparently the 5th Fleet had been already running patrols in the direction that Galaxy was relative to us, and they had identified the fastest route from Galaxy to us, and therefore, logically the path that the refugee fleet from Galaxy would have taken on it's way towards us. The fly in the ointment here was an unusually large number of fold faults in that path. The refugee fleet would have to de-fold, then power through the fault on standard drives before they could fold again.

Judging by timing of the initial mayday call from Galaxy and the fold topography, the 5th Fleet had identified a fold fault that the refugee fleet would be forced to pass through in approximately six hours – a fold fault that our high speed battleships could reach in half an hour of fold travel. The plan was to arrive at the fault thirty minutes earlier than the expected time, scour the area of any extant Vajra forces, set up a defensive perimeter, engage any pursuing Vajra forces in order to buy time for the refugee fleet to make it through the fold fault, and then fall back and withdraw back to Frontier.

All in all, it was a fairly sound plan, barring the lack of information regarding the enemy's standing forces. Currently the proposed battleground was clear of Vajra, but they (or whomever was controlling them) could easily identify the place as a valid choke point for anything fleeing from them, and flood it with forces. And there was no way we could gather information on any of the pursuing forces until we were in contact with the refugee fleet and get a status update, so that was the one area where we were flying blind, so to speak.

Given that we were doing to be spearheading the operation, as the ace squadrons of SMS we were relieved of duty for four hours in order to rest up for the battle. That didn't mean much for the Pixies though – they had new actuators installed on their Queadluuns, and while they were perfectly fine for combat, the finer calibrations could take time.

After the briefing we all ended up heading back towards the crew quarters. Saotome and Luca had gotten out ahead of us, and half heard bits of conversation filtered back to me indicated that Luca was brushing up our rookie's knowledge of fold faults.

A slight change in the rhythmic sound of footsteps behind me alerted me to someone approaching from the pack of people behind me.

"Yo," came the rocky voice that I instantly identified as belonging to Ramaria.

"What can I do for you?" I inquired with a smile.

"If you're free in a few hours, could you help with my calibrations? I hear you're pretty good mechanically, and our ground crew are spread a bit thin at the moment," she asked as she pulled up next to me, matching my stride.

"Where'd you hear that?" I asked, honest curiosity entering my voice. Before I'd finished the sentence though, I felt like slapping myself. Of course Ramaria went drinking every Friday night with the ground crews, and drunk workers loved to gossip.

"I heard it from some of your ground crew," she replied, confirming my thoughts. "So can you help or not?"

"We~ell, I haven't really worked on Quaedluuns before," I hedged, "so I'm not entirely sure how useful I'll be, but if you can't find anyone better, I'll help." I had infused my voice with a carefully modulated thread of doubt – I wasn't really all that interested in helping (in the hopes I could use my free time to gather information about the Vajra's assault on Galaxy), but at the same time I didn't want to turn her down outright.

"Someone's better than no-one," she said cheerily, completely ignoring the undertone of my reply. "I'll come get you in two hours." A rather hefty slap on the shoulder knocked me from my stride and then the red haired Pixie turned into down branch corridor that lead to her room. When I was certain she wasn't watching, I rolled my eyes and let loose a slight groan. You'd think that after almost five decades of dealing with zentraedi I'd have gotten used to explaining things more literally to then – they were an outspoken people and as a result tended to take conversations at face value.

"Yeah," came a voice from behind me – the slightly prepubescent tone told me it was Klan - "Ramaria hasn't quite got the hang of reading between the lines. She was raised in a fairly traditional zentran family," I was informed, as the blue haired kid sized meltran and her taller sub-ordinate Nene came up behind me. "Are you sure you're not planning on sewing discord in my squad?"

I shook my head with a sigh and looked at both meltrans. Was it just me, or was Nene looking slightly distressed? "Well, for someone who's not trying to, you're certainly doing a good job at it," Klan told me with a lopsided grin. The Pixie Squadron Commander attempted to playfully elbow me in the ribs, but with the height discrepancy between the two of us being as large as it was, I ended up wearing the nudge on my upper thigh. "Wouldn't you agree Nene?"

The taller meltran's cheeks began to darken and she pulled back, her hands flying to her mouth. "Onee-sama!" Nene wailed, shaking her head furiously. "It's not like that!"

I shot Klan a little grin as she broke into a self-satisfied cackle - the blue haired meltran always enjoyed getting her good natured jibes in on Nene, and seeing as Ramaria was out of sight now it fell to me to provide the feedback for her. Well, Mikhail and me in any case, our sniper having caught up with the three of us lounging in the corridor, his broad know-it-all smile informing us all that he'd caught at least the tail end of the conversation.

"Don't let Klan get to you Nene," the blonde sniper began casually, "she's just jealous that your love life is going better than hers."

For a brief second there was utter silence in the corridor. Klan's laughter died instantly, and a look of utter shock cross her face for a fraction of a second. Nene looked absolutely mortified. Sound began filtering back into corridor at that point - a hissing "Ffffffffff," from between Klan's teeth that was increasing in intensity with every passing moment. Comically enough, she was getting redder the more the volume rose, although as opposed to being a blush as per Nene's case, Klan's reddening was very definitely born of rage.

Mikhail didn't miss a beat. "Looks like you've sprung a leak," the sniper noted clinically, his casually friendly expression remaining unchanged.

It was at that point that Klan regained motor control and with an incoherent yell charged towards Mikhail - who contemptuously side stepped her and took off in the opposite direction down the corridor. By the time the Klan had realigned herself and took off in pursuit, Mikhail had achieved a sizeable lead, leaving Nene and myself in the corridor.

"Well, see you in a bit," I said with a wave and a smile.

Nene was still struggling to get over the teasing handed out to her and could only respond with a choked gurgle which I took to mean 'catch you around.' There was a brief second as Nene presumably replayed the last two seconds of her life in her head, then immediately proceeded to bury her blushing face in her hands. I shrugged and left with a smile - she'd work through it eventually.

As I strode down towards my room, idly I began to wonder how badly Klan's love life was going to be poor compared to Nene's. It didn't seem as though the pink haired meltran was dating anyone regularly, and as far as I knew she hadn't had a boyfriend at all in her life, so it wasn't like the bar was set high on that one. I guess it must just be some in-joke that Mikhail and Klan had going between themselves or something along those lines. I shrugged that train of thought off and entered my room, in order to make the most of my free time before Ramaria came along to drag me out to the hangars.

* * *

Before I was dragged out to the hangar by Ramaria, about the only interesting thing I'd come across regarding the Galaxy invasion was nothing actually directly related to the attack. Sheryl had held a press conference very shortly after we had finished our briefing and after delivering a hilariously played up and well received inspirational speech thanking Frontier for their contribution (further cementing, in my mind at least, her ability to play a crowd like a pro), proceeded to blow up reporters who dared talk negatively about her or her dedication to her home fleet and her revenge concert tonight. I was beginning to rethink my suspicions regarding Sheryl as being a potential cause for the Vajra attacks, given that Galaxy had just suffered from a Vajra attack on a scale never seen before, and the Galactic Fairy was sitting on her pretty little bottom on the Frontier convoy.

All of that conjecture was currently irrelevant though. At this particular point in time, with barely half an hour until launch, I was staring at lines and lines of feedback on a portable holo terminal hooked up to the seventeen metre tall grey Queadluun-Rea battle suit in front of me.

"Okay," I yelled up towards the open hatch. "Give it a try now!"

In response, Ramaria flexed the fists of the suit and twisted the arms. The movements looked slightly restrained, so I glanced at the holo. According to the numbers scrolling in the air in front of me the full range of motion was achieved, but pressure in the hydraulic system was possibly a bit high, at least if the system was anything similar to a VF-25's.

"It feels a bit tight," rolled in Ramaria's voice from up high.

"Already on it," I called back distractedly, bringing up the software controls for the hydraulics and dropping the pressure back a bit. "Try now!"

As Ramaria ran through the series of motions again, an exasperated voice echoed throughout the hangar.

"You're not here?" I glanced over to the source of the voice. It was Mikhail, standing in front of Klan's red Queadluun (apparently having made apologies for his earlier comments), yelling into his phone. The sniper in question glanced around and noticed everyone in the hangar looking at him, and lowered his voice for the rest of his conversation, so I turned back to Ramaria. The red haired meltran met my gaze (having previously turned to try and figure out what was going on with Mikhail) and nodded with a grin.

"Feels good. Thanks for the help," she rumbled.

"Not a problem," I replied with a smile. A holo clock in the hangar was counting down the time until launch, and with thirty one minutes left on the clock, I figured it was time for me to prep for combat, so I made my way to the locker room. I was halfway into my suit when Mikhail joined me, apparently finished up with the tweaking on Klan's battlesuit.

"So, who were you on the phone to earlier?" I inquired almost immediately, pulling my suit up.

"Princess Alto," the blonde sniper replied, the exasperation thick in his tone. "The clown _knows_ that we're launching soon and still just ran off on what he called a 'personal errand'."

"Where to?" I asked conversationally, checking my suit to make sure everything was sitting where it was supposed to. Shoulders, check. Legs, check. Crotch, quick re-arrange, check.

"He didn't tell me," Mikhail grunted sourly as he pulled his pilot suit on. "But he did promise me he'd be here before launch, which I suppose is a step in the right direction."

I shrugged - it didn't seem in Saotome's nature to be late, and I assumed Mikhail would know that better than I would. I guess the unusual snappiness our sniper was displaying was a method for him to deal with his nervousness - it wasn't normal for Mikhail Blanc to lose his cool, regardless of the situation.

"You seem to be in a rough mood today," I commented to the sniper.

"Long day," he shrugged shortly. "Dragged off to a party to celebrate Ranka being scouted, find out a huge Vajra fleet may have wiped out an entire convoy, get effectively drafted into an extension of the military, and ordered to sortie against unknown odds."

"Well most of that I can sympathise with," I said, slotting into my role of friendly squadmate nicely, "but Ranka being scouted was something I hadn't heard about. What for?"

"You haven't heard about that?" Mikhail asked with a raised eyebrow. "I would have thought Luca would have... Well, anyway, she was scouted after a little impromptu street performance on Island Three the other day."

"Scouted for her vocal ability, no doubt?" I asked rhetorically. Ranka was always at the core of a few kernels of gossip around the base, seeing as she was the Squad Commander's (adopted) little sister and roughly the same age as half the pilots in our squad, and one of those rumours was that she was a better than average vocalist. I guess the proof of that was in the fact that she managed a finalist appearance at the Miss Macross pageant and now, well, she'd been scouted out for professional work.

"That and her cuteness factor, no doubt," replied Mikhail, making fun of my manner of speaking. With the sniper suited up we made our way over to the EX-gear storage and started pulling our own EX-gear's off the rack.

"I take it this didn't go down well with Ozma," I noted to the boy, and he shrugged.

"You should ask him how that went, I certainly don't have the balls to find out his opinion of that."

We both shared a quiet chuckle on that, and I made a mental note to ask exactly that on an open channel - at least when this was all over. It was at that point that the PA system chimed twice to grab our attention.

"Attention all hands," came the slightly tinnier than usual sound of Captain Wilder over the speakers, "the Galaxy refugee fleet has de-folded earlier than we expected and we have a good fix on their location. It consists of two vessels, the _Dulfim_ and the _Kaitos_. That's the good news." Mikhail and I hadn't stopped gearing up, and in fact we were probably now rushing ourselves a little bit. We knew the bad news was coming. "Which brings us to the bad news. A Vajra fleet has also de-folded in their vicinity. We are initiating emergency launch procedures. The Quarter will be departing in exactly ten minutes, so all hands, finish departure preparations."

Mikhail swore loudly. "Bloody Alto, he'd better make it here on time!" On one hand, I did share Mikhail's sentiments - there should be no reason for him to scoot out on errands when he knew our schedule was already very tight. On the other hand... Saotome may become a liability in combat with his aggressive attitude, and given that this would be his first combat larger than a skirmish, he might not be prepared for the amount of incoming fire and bogeys. If he didn't make it here in time, he might be saving himself from an entirely avoidable death. The kid was skilled, no doubt, but all the skill in the world means nothing if you fly headfirst into an unavoidable wall of bullets. I grunted non-committally.

It wasn't long before the two of us were kitted up and rushing to our units. The hangar was a mess of activity as pilots scrambled into cockpits and maintenance crew finished final checks. Automated ordinance loaders whirred and clicked, loading cases of cannon shells, racks of micro-missiles and fresh capacitors for laser systems into the appropriate units. Mikhail and myself dodged most of the ground level traffic by taking to the air on a burst of thruster power, the EX-gear assisted jump landing me in the cockpit of my VF-25 perfectly. The canopy came down with a hydraulic whine, reacting to my presence in the cockpit. The EX-gear unfolded as it interfaced with the Messiah's systems and within seconds I was flicking through my preflight.

"How's it looking Robbs?" I asked into the helmet mounted comms system.

"About in as good a shape as she's ever likely to be," came Robbs' voice from my earbud. I glanced around my bird and spotted the middle aged ground crew leader peering around the nosecone critically. Apparently satisfied, he gave it an affectionate slap and shot me a thumbs up before backing away.

I was halfway through my preflight when Ozma's voice burst through the comm. "Status?" he requested. I noted he was broadcasting on the squadron channel, which meant by protocol we should be responding in order of seniority.

"Skull-Two, finishing preflights," replied Mikhail crisply. I glanced over at the blue VF-25G that Mikhail was piloting, and sure enough he appeared engrossed in his controls.

"Skull-Three, suited up and heading to the hangar," came the higher pitched voice of Luca.

"Skull-Four, finishing preflights," I responded in much the same manner as Mikhail. I tilted my stick to the right and was rewarded as the diagnostic display in my HUD showed power pouring into my starboard vector thrusters.

"Skull-Five, suiting up." Saotome's voice sounded further away than the rest of us, probably because he hadn't pulled his helmet on yet. I spared a quick glance at the hangar clock, confirming we had four minutes until the Quarter was launched - the kid had made good time from wherever he was. Looked like he was with us for good or for bad now - I made a mental note to keep as much of an eye on him as possible in the upcoming battle.

"Hurry it up Alto," warned Ozma.

"Sorry!" Came the unrepentant reply.

I finished up my preflight by tweaking my seat a little, and took advantage of the free time to take in the view of the hangar. The amount of ground crew scuttling about had markedly decreased as final checks and loading of ordinance was completed and they hurried off to reach their launch seats. There was a definite tenseness in the hangar now as we approached launch time on the mission clock, a palpable sense of contained excitement and nervousness that I could almost taste.

A flare of blue flame described an arc into the cockpit of Saotome's Messiah. I glanced over, and oddly enough, the first thing I saw him do after interfacing his EX-gear into the system was attach something onto his upper canopy. I immediately fed a fine thread of odo into my eyes, allowing me to pick out the dark purple glint hanging off a silver mount. My objective achieved, I closed my circuits. I keyed open a private video channel to Skull-Five.

"Didn't get a chance to get the earring back in time?" I inquired. "Or did you decide it matched your eye shade better than hers?" I had put a bit of a lilt in my tone in order to convey the idea that it was gentle humour, and was somewhat happy to find that Saotome didn't fly off the handle at me. Not that that wouldn't have been fun either, mind you.

"Pfft," the kid grunted. "I took it back to her and she just told me to keep it as a good luck charm," the blue haired kid told me.

"So now you're a knight with the lady's favour?"

Saotome pointedly ignored that as he ran through his preflight.

"Oh," he said, almost as an afterthought, "Sheryl wanted me to thank you for finding it as well."

I rolled my eyes theatrically. "Really Saotome? You told her that?" I was actually irritated that he'd done that, because if Sheryl did have a hand in the Vajra attacks, as less likely as that had become now, it would put her on guard against me. "You could have taken all the credit there and scored some major points, and now you're splitting them with me?"

"I thought everyone wanted some points with the galactic fairy," he shot back. I shrugged, but I was fairly sure he missed the action as he tested his engine output.

"She's a bit too young for me," I replied. Young for the age my identity had me listed as, and _incredibly_ too young for my real age. It was a half baked excuse though – sure, I wasn't interested in getting into her pants, but the real reason I wasn't interested had nothing to do with age - being romantically interested in women was something that just didn't happen for me after Rin died, and as if I'd have time for it these days anyway.

"Suit yourself," our rookie told me before cutting the channel, only to broadcast on the squad channel seconds later.

"Skull-Five, ready for take-off."

That made him the last one of our squadron to finish up. Ozma grunted in the affirmative wasted little time in linking our squad channel into the bridge.

"Skull Squadron, standby checks complete," Ozma reported to the bridge.

I'm not going to lie – I was surprised when a holo of Catherine Glass in her N.U.N.S. uniform popped up on my HUD, heralding the reply.

"Acknowledged, Skull Leader," she replied with all the crispness her military training could bring to bear.

"Cathy! Why are you..." Unsurprisingly enough, Ozma seemed a little bit surprised to see her there too, as evidenced by his stuttering reply.

Catherine's face twisted. Her eyebrows came down, her eyes narrowed and she took the kind of breath that people use when they're about to dive into a situation they don't want to have to deal with. There was definitely a history between Ozma and Catherine, I decided.

"Please refrain from making personal conversation, Skull Leader," she said, with a remarkably straight face.

Unfortunately for our newest addition to the C.I.C., Ozma was quick to recover his wits.

"Got stuck with the short end of the straw on Daddy's order again, huh?" It was difficult to see under Ozma's helmet, but given the smug tone he had delivered that line with, it wasn't hard to imagine the Squad Commander grinning like a cat.

If looks were weather, Catherine's face went from overcast to tropical storm in the blink of an eye.

"None of your damn business Ozma!" She yelled back down the comm channel, before shooting a withering look at someone off-screen and terminating the comm link with the bridge.

I made damn sure my video feed was down and then chuckled quietly into the squad comm. Ozma's face flared up in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. I'd say it was a 99 to 1 part mix.

"Someone found that funny!" The grey haired Squad Commander roared into the comm.

"I didn't," I replied, my voice joining the chorus of denials from my squad. "Well," I continued after the noise died down, "that's not quite true I suppose. I found it hilarious."

Everyone had their own way of dealing with the tension before a battle. Once upon a time I would take that tension and bottle it up inside me until I found my opponents, then channel all that emotion at them, fighting with my heart and feelings. These days though, I never fought with emotion, and as a result had a habit of dispelling any pre-battle tension (or righteous fury, depending on how I was feeling that day) with humour and sarcasm.

Ozma clearly didn't appreciate it though.

Just as he was opening his mouth to fire back at me, a slight tug in my stomach told me that we had left the dock of Island-One and were now on our way to the combat area. A few seconds later there was a faint, almost imperceptible feeling of weightlessness as we left the gravity field of Island-One, which quickly passed as the Quarter's gravity field generators took up the slack.

"Ladies and gentlemen," came the stately voice of Captain Wilder on the ship-wide comm channel, "As you may have noticed, we've just completed launch procedures. As soon a we reach a safe fold zone, this ship will immediately conduct twelve short distance folds." Well, that made sense - the power requirements of a fold increased exponentially with distance and mass, making a series of shorter jumps more efficient. "All hands, prepare for fold!"

The hangar was completely void of ground crew now - the only people left were pilots in their machines. I relaxed back into my seat and opened four of my magic circuits. We'd be in the thick of combat soon, possibly as soon as we de-folded, and I wanted to be prepared. Suddenly Ozma's voice burst through the comm.

"All of you, listen up!" Our Squad Commander said with authority, having apparently gotten over the ribbing I'd given him earlier. He paused for a second, presumably to make sure he had the attention of everyone he was broadcasting to (out of the corner of my eye I noticed on the bottom of my HUD that it was to all fighter squadrons). "I'm not going to let a single one of you die! We're definitely going to live and come back to Frontier!"

As a traditional motivational speech, it was horrible. Far too short and lacking in the typical wound out platitudes and calls to patriotism that Glass had liberally peppered through his earlier press release. As a demonstration of how Ozma truly felt though, and a summation of what we existed for as SMS, it was remarkably successful, and that probably meant more to most of the pilots here than speeches trotted out by politicians and celebrities.

My thoughts on that topic were interrupted as my circuits thrummed slightly in response to _something_ and the room was bathed in a purple glow. I had no idea what was messing with my circuits, but the purple tinge and deepening sense of dislocation with the universe in general (seriously, it was like everything had become an old style 3D movie, only that no-one had thought to provide glasses) meant only one thing.

We were under way.

* * *

Author's notes:

_I'll start with the usual apologies for tardiness! There'll be some point in the future when I stick to my schedule, I swear._

_Having said that, I found this chapter hard to write, as it was basically setup for the next one, which covers my second favourite part of Macross Frontier – the first major battle in the series. In order to make up for what I consider to be boring but necessary transition from peacetime to war, I ended up not being able to advance Shirou's character, and instead felt like I had to get in some observations of how the crew and Shirou were dealing with the unexpected build-up. Hopefully it didn't end up that badly._

_I'll take this opportunity to thank everyone for their reviews too, as I realised a few days ago I don't think I've done that yet. Thanks for the feedback guys!_

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter!_


	9. First Attack

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 8: First Attack.

* * *

It didn't take long for the Quarter to complete the twelve fold jumps. I could count them with my eyes shut – every time we de-folded then folded again, my magic circuits thrummed in resonance with _something_. It was the strangest thing – I'd been in hundreds of fold jumps, with and without odo running through my circuits, and never had they resonated like they were doing now.

Every time we activated or deactivated the fold drives, a random beat would disrupt the flow of my odo for a second or so. Not enough for me to lose control of my circuits, but it was definitely noticeable. On top of that, I couldn't pick a pattern in the beat – it was completely random, every single time.

I was slightly worried. I was about to head into what could potentially be the largest Vajra fleet encountered yet, and if my circuits were unreliable – well let's just say I might be graduating to full blown Counter-Guardian a lot earlier than I was expecting to be.

Not much that could be done now though. We were here, and pretty soon we'd be finding out one way or another how hot the combat zone was.

"Prep for take-off," Ozma snapped on the squad comm, a holo of his face appearing in the bottom right of my HUD. Skull Squadron were the ace V.F. outfit in SMS, which meant we had the honour of being first out. As a result our units were secured right next to the elevators to the flight deck. Ozma and I taxied onto the foremost of the three elevators that connected the hangar to the flight deck of the ARMD-L carrier that made up launch platform for the Quarter's fighter complement. Saotome and Mikhail taxied onto the elevator behind us, and Luca made himself the sole occupant of the third.

Locking clamps snapped over our landing gear and the elevators quickly rose into the roof. As we passed out of the hangar bay, a floating feeling in my stomach informed me that we'd left the artificial gravity field generated internally on the Quarter. As we were deposited on the deck of the ARMD-L I flicked a switch down in the lower left of my cockpit and a couple of the electromagnetic locks usually reserved for use in the transformation sequence of the Messiah activated, feebly keeping my wheels on deck. It was weird for such an technologically up-to-date company such as SMS to use such an outdated form of launch for it's highly advanced variable fighters, I reflected as we taxied over to the launchways. Hell, the NUNS were using multiple unit integrated elevator launch platforms on their carriers these days, and they were a much more efficient system than the setup we had on the Quarter. I mean, here we were, taxiing in microgravity!

Out of the corner of my eye I watched the elevators recede into the deck, heading back to pick up the next squadron out - the Pixies. That was of secondary concern however - my odo enhanced eyes were focussed on the battle kilometres away, where a veritable swarm of red and white Vajra were overwhelming the two ships that had managed to escape Galaxy - the _Dulfim_ and the _Kaitos_. I spotted a few smaller NUNS units mixed in the chaos - mostly V9 unmanned Ghost drones - but their numbers were being whittled away before our eyes. Clearly we'd arrived in the nick of time, something for which I was very grateful – another ten minutes and there'd probably be nothing left to save, if I was any guess.

"All fighter units, prepare for launch," came Captain Wilder's steely voice, having opened up a non-visual channel to all the fighter squadrons on board.

We were in position on the launchways now. A line of yellow guidance holos swirled into existence above the deck – the signal to release the electromagnetic clamps and raise the landing gear. I did so, leaving my Messiah wobbling slightly above the deck, the station keeping thrusters flaring occasionally. I felt a trill of excitement pass through me – when all was said and done, this is what I lived for. The chance to save people.

The guidance holos flipped green.

"Skull Squadron, heading out!" roared Ozma, and his VF-25 glided past me on twin flares of blue, rapidly gaining velocity.

I pushed forwards on the throttle as far as it would go. My Messiah barely even shook in response as it's engine lines flared full of power and I chased out after Ozma. Once space-borne, I pulled the throttle back to seventy percent and performed a quick systems check. No problems there. A glance around confirmed that the rest of Skull Squadron were in formation with us. A quick check of my scopes let me know the Pixies were the next squadron from SMS into the void, and they were rapidly closing in on us. It was at that point Ozma opened a channel to our entire fighter complement.

"Skull Leader to all units, we're here to clear a path for our military. While we're at it, we want to collect data on the Vajra as well!" he reminded us, as if we had to be told again.

"Prototype Fold Communication Guidance System is all green," reported Luca. "With this, we shouldn't have to worry about the Vajra affecting our fold communications and causing confusion."

Well, that was the first time I'd heard about the deployment of what I assumed were anti-jamming measures. I could feel a frown forming on my face, and seeing as I wasn't transmitting any video feeds, I didn't bother to reign in the visible emotion. I wasn't even aware that the Vajra had any capability to jam our fold communications to begin with, which made me slightly suspicious as to why Luca had chosen to deploy the anti-jamming in this encounter. What did he know about the Vajra that I didn't?

Or more likely, what did the higher ups at L.A.I. know that I didn't?

"Acknowledged," grunted Ozma. If he was surprised about the anti-jamming measures, he hid it well.

"Alto," the Squadron Commander continued, "you stay back as far as possible."

"What?" the boy in question shot back. His voice was devoid of the directionless rage it usually contained when being told something contrary to his opinions. Not to say it was emotionless – there was a very clinical undertone there. "I can fight too!"

"Damn rookie," snorted Ozma good naturedly.

There was a short pause as Ozma considered his course of action. Personally I was hoping that our greying Squad Commander would keep him back – a few easy kills made by picking off the enemies that Ozma and I would force into position would be a good little introduction to combat for Saotome, and a great way to build his confidence (although, come to think of it, I guess he hardly needed to work on that).

"If we're doing this, I want you close enough behind me that you can smell my arse!" Ozma roared down the comm.

Well.

I guess we could do that too.

Suddenly, my circuits started to flare – that weird resonance again, only, well, stronger in amplitude. I shrugged it off, as we were closing rapidly in on the combat area now, and my scopes were starting to filter out individual Vajra units. I reinforced my eyes, increasing my imaging power and focussing it on the battle ahead. It looked like the Vajra had finally deigned to notice our entrance into this fight – several units had broken away from their vanguard and were wheeling around to face us.

"Incoming," warned Luca sharply, the extra sensors on his RVF-25 variant no doubt affording him increased resolution on his scanners.

"All units, Planet Dance!" roared Ozma. I rolled my eyes as I brought the throttle up to maximum again and pulled slightly to the left. Only Ozma would name formations after the songs of a rock band that disbanded almost fifteen years ago.

Regardless, a call for formation was a call for formation, and there wasn't a better choice at this point in time. The Planet Dance was essentially a spearpoint made out of several variable fighters. The lead was taken by the frontliners, usually Ozma and myself, whose role was to cover two frontal arcs as we advanced. Mikhail would ride in the middle of the formation, providing covering sniper fire down a central cone between myself and Ozma. Luca would hang at the back, his QF-4000 Ghost's covering the flanks of our formation. We were still working on a version that incorporated a third frontliner into it, but for now we'd make do with Saotome riding on Ozma's arse.

If we were the only squadron on the field, this would leave our rear wide open – but in a co-ordinated effort like today's we'd have other squadrons following us up to take advantage of the wedge we were going to drive into the Vajra lines, and they could cover us.

We powered through a small field of debris, and the targeting computer finally blinked green, indicating that my long range hardpoint mounted missiles were in range. I tagged two of the leading red Vajra on my HUD, and was squeezing the missile launch trigger when my target lock dropped off the lead unit. My finger froze in mid squeeze – the HUD was telling me a higher priority targeting solution had my target.

Milliseconds later, a flash of blue split the vacuum, pulping the head of lead Vajra creature. Another two shots slammed into the upper carapace, causing the Vajra to veer away and explode spectacularly.

"Bingo," came the collected voice of Mikhail through the comm.

I had already re-tagged my long range missiles by then, and with a squeeze of my finger I launched all eight of the missiles on my hardpoints. They rocketed forwards like a swarm of angry bees, joining up with the missiles from a barrage Ozma had launched almost simultaneously.

The only long range capability of the Vajra closing in on us were the anti-ship energy weapons the red ones had on their shoulders, and as such Ozma and myself had prioritised the larger red types in our missile strike. A few of the Vajra in the lead of their formation, realising the threat posed by the missiles closing in on them, began to break in order to evade.

Too slow.

I had personally tagged two missiles each to four targets, all of which were marked as confirmed kills as the space in front of our spearhead blossomed into red-yellow fire. It looked like Ozma, with the extra ammunition granted by his Armoured FAST Pack, had dropped three missiles each onto five targets, and as a result was leading today's kill count.

Our missile strike had knocked out all of the red Vajra in the first wave rushing to meet us, and without missing a beat, I transformed into GERWALK mode, continuing forward at an undiminished pace thanks to the momentum I'd built up in fighter mode. I levelled my Howard GU-17A 58mm Gatling gunpod at the closest white Vajra, and with a hail of cannon shells heralding us, our formation crashed into the shattered Vajra swarm sent to hold us off.

* * *

"Incredible," came the awed voice of Saotome after we'd blown through the initial Vajra formation.

"Don't space out!" snapped the Squad Commander, transforming quickly into GERWALK mode and cutting across to his left. Saotome vectored off to the right almost instantaneously and milliseconds later imitation cannon fire split through the vacuum between the two Messiahs. Ozma responded with his gunpod, the incessant strobing flashes at the muzzle of his weapon spelling the end for a creature downrange of us.

A second swarm of Vajra were coming to intercept us now. I raised my gunpod again, then used my manoeuvring thrusters to push me hard to the right, evading a line of imitation cannon tracers that cut through the void. I sighted down on my assailant, who seemed to sense the threat and slid away to the right.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes that rookies make is that they tend to get too focussed on a single target. That kind of tunnel vision ruins your awareness of your immediate space and other threats that may be around. I was better than that.

So as that white creature moved out of my firing line, I simply brought the targeting reticle down over his bigger, and redder, brother - who was being much more co-operative when it came to staying in my gunsights. I took an extra second or two to tighten the aim onto an area just off centre of the chest carapace, then squeezed the trigger. The familiar thudding of the gunpod firing reverberated through the Messiah's frame, and the cannon shells slammed onto the carapace of the red Vajra, bursting through the armour and igniting the membrane that fed power into the anti-ship weapon. A burst of yellow light flared around the exit wound for a split second before the red Vajra went still.

Seconds later, a swarm of micro-missiles rocketed over my head on seemingly random vectors, before zeroing in on the white Vajra that had evaded me earlier. One missile, on a more direct path than the others, detonated near the creature, buffeting it for a split second before the other missiles finished their flight, ending the Vajra in a burst of chemical flame.

There were still two of the smaller white Vajra to deal with in the space I was assigned to cover in this formation, and both appeared to have a bead on my Messiah. I rolled my VF-25 'down' relative to myself, then swung hard to the left as the Vajra began firing. Like the first encounter I'd had with the Vajra, these ones seemed intent on not aiming until they were already firing, then lining up their shots using the tracer rounds in their imitation cannons – even if I hadn't have pulled off those hard evasive manoeuvres, the imitation cannon fire would have been well away to my left.

Before I had a chance to bring up the targeting reticle for my gunpod, my HUD covered them in yellow warning tags – someone else had already claimed those two as their targets. I shrugged, transformed my Messiah into fighter mode and increased power to the main engines, accelerating towards the two creatures, who for whatever reason could just not manage to bring their cannons accurately to bear on me.

At the last moment, I used a combination of the port manoeuvring thrusters, a half transformation into GERWALK and a light touch on the main engines to throw my bird into a barrel roll (not an easy thing to pull off in vacuum, not by a long shot). As I passed the two Vajra, micro-missile explosions lit up the space around them. I was caught in the outer extremities of the blast, but took no damage as I rocketed out of the yellow flowerburst explosions.

I checked the scopes – those two Vajra were dead.

"Man," came Ramaria's voice through the comm, a small holo of her face appearing on the HUD, "you sure know how to make that look good!"

"Of course I do," I replied with a small grin. "Thanks for the cover."

"Don't thank me," she replied quickly, her eyes dancing all over the holo before her face split into a grin. A click came through the comm. Must have been setting up her missiles. "That was all Nene."

"Thanks Nene," I said, noticing that she'd also been in on this conversation.

"Any time," the pink haired meltran said. Her face popped up on a holo next to Ramaria's communication – she was wearing a mask of concentration, the same face she wore when we fought in the dojo.

In my peripheral vision a series of explosions went off, and I heard Ramaria laugh. "Gotcha," she crowed. I shook my head and closed the channel.

As there were no immediate threats (I'm sure some people would disagree with me, but there was nothing to engage within five seconds of travel), I took a moment to really take in the scope of the battle. Directly ahead of us was the _Dulfim, _and standing between us and it was a thin line of Vajra. Due to the fold topography, the two refugee ships were basically trying to safely make it to where the Quarter had de-folded. That meant that the Vajra between us and the _Dulfim_ were their lead units – their vanguard.

Of course, in this sense, the words 'thin line' were rather relative. There were dozens of Vajra, possibly more than a hundred, separating us from the _Dulfim_, but that was bugger all compared to the hundreds of Vajra making up their main force _behind_ the two vessels. I couldn't spot any Ghost drones on defence for the Galaxy ships now, which meant the refugee fleet was down to point defence cannons and anti-fighter barrage weapons – the same weapons that had proven horribly useless against the Vajra when Frontier was attacked last week.

That certainly wasn't stopping the refugee fleet from trying though. The fire that was flying between the larger ships and the Vajra swarm was so thick you could almost walk on it, but unfortunately the effects were almost one way traffic – the _Dulfim_ and the _Kaitos_ were shuddering almost constantly under the fire, and the _Kaitos_ especially looked like she might blow any minute now.

So it looked like we'd have to break through the main Vajra vanguard, clear some space around the two ships and then run defence until they could safely fold out. Not that easy.

Well, unless your immediate superior was named Ozma Lee.

"Skull Four: cover me!"

Ozma's VF-25 transformed into fighter mode and dove head-first into the Vajra vanguard, jinking left and right with his thrusters, sliding past oncoming fire with apparent ease. It was an impressive feat, considering the Squad Commander's bird was equipped with an Armoured FAST Pack – it was slightly more than double the weight of the Super FAST Pack, and none of that weight went into extra thruster ports, it all went into carrying more missiles.

Saotome was doing his level best to keep up with the Squad Commander, and was managing nicely for the most part. The main difference between the two was easy to spot – while Ozma was still heading in guns blazing, Saotome had yet to fire a shot during the battle. If I had to guess, I'd say Saotome didn't have the ability just yet to keep up with Ozma _and_ concentrate on firing at the same time.

In response to Ozma's call for support, I flipped my Messiah into battloid mode, dodging what appeared to be an organic missile analogue by a few centimetres in the process. As it swung past, my control over my open magic circuits stuttered for a second. A few quick bursts on the manoeuvring thrusters spun me around to track the 'missile' as it hurled itself through space, and my Messiah brought the gunpod up in response to a slight tug on the cockpit controls.

Without engaging the targeting system, I opened fire, and the missile disappeared in a blaze of cannon fire. I allowed my battloid to continue spinning until it was facing towards Ozma again, then pulled heavily on my circuits in order to feed odo into my main engine lines – Ozma was getting away from me, and there's no way I'd be able to cover him if he got out of range of my gunpod. When I judged that it was safe, I raised one leg of my battloid to a forty-five degree angle behind me, locked the gunpod up to the shoulder of my machine (standard battloid space combat stance – it allowed for high speed movement and quick targeting speed) and poured all my available power into the main leg and backpack thrusters, exceeding their recommended safety levels by thirty percent.

From a technical standpoint it would be safer to transform to fighter mode in order to catch up with Ozma – but with so many threats in the combat zone having the extra manoeuvrability of the battloid mode would enable me to evade more efficiently and decrease my target acquisition time, seeing as I had to cover both of Ozma's flanks now. Not that I was the only person covering the Squadron Commander – even as I was pulling into position, I counted four sniper rounds splitting the void. Michel was busy today.

I used the main thrusters to swing in towards Ozma, spitting shells at any of the smaller Vajra who were hoping to try their luck against the Squad Commander and his rookie tail. Aim to the left, forty rounds. Push further the left, evade a line of cannon fire. Gunpod up, squeeze the trigger. Reinforce hip joints, kick left leg forwards, engage right boot thrusters, swing the battloid into a flip, level gunpod at red Vajra approaching Ozma from his six o'clock, terminally discourage it with a rain of cannon rounds. Tag three smaller white Vajra as my battloid continues it's flip, arm four micro-missiles per target, fire.

I was leaving an impressive body count behind me as Ozma drove further into the vanguard, ducking, weaving and transforming like a madman. On my glances behind us when my manoeuvring faced me that way, I could see the Pixies keeping up tight on us, and the rest of the SMS fighter compliment driving into the wedge Skull Squadron had opened in the Vajra lines. The small part of my brain that was dedicated to the artistic, no matter how crazy the situation was, decided that it was truly an awe inspiring sight.

The remainder of my brain noted, rather clinically, that the plan was working. Especially when I saw a brown, oversized machine gaining quickly on us from above.

I'd just finished pouring fire through a large Vajra that had missed Saotome by a good two metres or two with it's anti-ship weapon when Ozma, his VF-25 in GERWALK mode, abruptly brought up his leg thrusters and fired them, _hard_. I briefly considered pulling up alongside him, but decided not to, and continued to coast along as our Squad Commander came to a dead stop in space.

Fighter combat in space is traditionally performed at speed – you need velocity to evade, as a general rule. It's not set in stone though – there are certain game-breaking attacks that require a stationary platform, and as Ozma came to a halt, his VF-25 transformed into battloid mode in preparation for one of those.

Suddenly, targeting data flooded my HUD. Nearly every target in a direct line between our Planet Dance formation and the _Dulfim_ was obscured by yellow targeting tags.

Milliseconds later the Armoured VF-25 lit up.

"Eat this!" roared Ozma down the comm.

Dozens upon dozens of micro-missiles had detached from the combination of chest mounted HMM-5A Mobile Remmington micro-missile CIWS launcher pods and the leg mounted Remmington Close Range micro-missile launcher pods the Armoured battloid was toting. The lead missiles began dancing towards the swarm on automated random patterns, while the latter missiles described more aggressive arcs towards their target, covered from anti-missile defenses by the leading guided explosive devices.

Blue trails of fire began to split and diverge as the missiles reached the swarm, groups of missiles breaking off to chase down their tagged targets. I cruised past Ozma's Messiah as he was transforming back into GERWALK mode, and swept the area immediately in front of us for targets. I drew a bead on the closest Vajra as the missiles reached the swarm, but held my fire – the white drone almost instantly disappeared in a burst of red-yellow fire.

I continued forward, now on point, re-targeting constantly. Ozma's missile strike had done it's job though – a trail of flowerburst explosions cut a path through the void between us and the _Dulfim, _emptying that region of space of enemies.

Our path to the _Dulfim_ was clear.

"Canaria, we've opened your catwalk! Skull Four and Five: Escort her in," commanded our greying Squad Commander, a holo of his face showing up on the bottom right hand corner of my HUD.

"Roger that," I replied. "Saotome, on me!"

"Roger," he replied quickly.

I flipped my unit back into fighter mode, fed half the available power into my main thrusters and the felt the frame of my Messiah hum in response to the acceleration. Out of the top of my cockpit I saw Canaria's VB-6 König Monster rocket forwards into the breach - and into a storm of fire. Despite the fact we'd cleared the direct path, there were still dozens of Vajra on our flanks that were moving to close up the gap, and they were stating their displeasure at our intrusion in no uncertain terms.

I played the manoeuvring thrusters like a piano in order to push my fighter into a zero gee barrel roll, swinging up and pulling into formation alongside Canaria. A quick glance at my scopes confirmed that Saotome had pulled in on the opposite side on Canaria. The three of us dove on through the torrent of Vajra fire towards the _Dulfim_, which was rapidly growing larger as we closed in on it. As escorts, we did very little – our evasive flying and the heavy armour plates on the Monster kept the three of us safe from the incoming fire. I did take the opportunity to drop a dozen micro-missiles on a red Vajra that had tried to block our path, and barely five seconds after it had been erased from existence Canaria opened the comm, broadcasting into the open.

"Rabbit One to _Dulfim_: I'm borrowing your deck!"

The Monster began it's transformation sequence under heavy imitation cannon fire, which was the cue for Saotome and myself to pull away. I pulled away to the left, dodging an analogue missile fired by a white Vajra creature behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder at the offending creature tailing me and snorted derisively. I flipped my Messiah into GERWALK mode and played on my portside thrusters, pushing me into a wide arc that would soon cut in front of Saotome's VF-25.

"Saotome! You got this guy on my tail?" I asked the blue haired rookie. His holo popped up in my cockpit and I glanced at it for a fraction of a second. The kid looked slightly stressed, but his voice didn't waver in reply.

"No problem."

It was going to be a nice and easy for the kid – shooting down a preoccupied enemy trying to chase me down. I glanced over at the _Dulfim_, where the Monster had slammed down on the deck. My reinforced vision spotted the leg stabilisers crashing onto the upper deck where Canaria had parked her bird. I just couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

Until a line of imitation cannon fire streaked over my cockpit and began to track down onto my bird.

I glanced over my shoulder, checked my scopes, and my face split into a grin again. Just as the imitation cannon fire was beginning to get worryingly close, it suddenly stopped. I threw one more glance over my shoulder, where a mess of flash frozen blue ichor and white meat was travelling through space where the bogey on my tail was milliseconds ago. It wouldn't change vector under it's own power ever again.

"Congratulations on keeping up Saotome," I told him over the comm. It was the first kill I'd seen him make today. My vector flashed my Messiah underneath Saotome's, and as I passed close, I felt that damn annoying resonance in my circuits again. This time, there was a discernible pattern – a definite repeat in the resonance, but it quickly passed as I gained distance from his unit.

Okay. That's it. Just what on earth was going on here today? First of all the fold jumps, then the beginning of the attack, then the analogue missiles and now Saotome's Messiah. What was the connecting factor here?

My extremely brief musing was interrupted as Canaria's voice echoed through my earpiece. "Rabbit One to all units who don't want to get blown to hell! Get out of my firing line!"

I glanced over at the deck of the _Dulfim_ and sure enough, the quad railguns of the Monster had been levelled at the main Vajra swarm. With no more warning, a flash of fire and smoke exploded out of the gun barrels and the arm mounted heavy missile launchers spat it's volley of six missiles. The railgun shells quickly disappeared from the optical suite of my Messiah, but I kept track of them with my reinforced eyes.

I knew it was my imagination, but it felt as though the entire battle was holding it's breath. Only for a split second though, as the self guiding shells spread out for maximum impact.

And then maximum impact happened.

Four _huge _yellow spheres blinked into existence in the middle of the main Vajra swarm. On a scale at least an order of magnitude larger than our micro-missiles, the explosions threw the Vajra swarm into disarray – any creatures caught in the radius of the blasts simply disappeared, disintegrating into their constituent atoms under the intense energy. The Vajra fortunate enough to not be in the initial blast had varying degrees of success at survival. The creatures closest to the explosions were simply pulped by the concussive force of the detonation, expiring violently as their carapaces shattered and spread ichor and muscle through the vacuum, flash-freezing almost instantaneously. The Vajra further out were heavily buffeted by the concussive wave, but not outright killed.

Well, not until the heavy missiles detonated. Although the detonations were small in comparison to the railgun shells, the targeting solution Canaria had found ringed the immediate kill zone from her railguns, and the stunned Vajra caught in _that_ kill zone disintegrated as well.

Saotome summed it up nicely.

"Wow."

On the down low, I couldn't help but agree. I'd seen the VB-6 in action before, but that still didn't make the effects any less impressive. Giant chunks had been taken out of the Vajra swarm assaulting the two ships, and we now had some breathing space with which to extract the refugee ships.

* * *

The _Kaitos_ took advantage of the brief lull in incoming fire by adjusting it's vector. The way I judged it, it was aiming pull into the corridor between the _Dulfim_ and the Quarter that our Planet Dance had opened up. I glanced over my shoulder and noted with some degree of satisfaction that our follow up forces were widening the corridor – within a minute there wouldn't be anything left of the Vajra vanguard.

The battle was becoming a touch less desperate now. Thanks to the breathing room granted to us by Canaria and her VB-6, the refugee ships were now able to concentrate their energies on running – even more so considering more and more SMS forces were flooding into escort positions around the stricken ships. The tone of the battle was changing for us as well – instead of being on the offensive, it was our turn to set up a rock solid defensive position.

We achieved this by using the _Dulfim_ as a mobile defensive anchor. The ship was battered as all hell, but the majority of it's defensively mounted destroids were still operational, which provided a close range blizzard of anti-fighter fire to keep the Vajra from getting too close. About two thirds of our active squadrons were set up in escort positions around the _Dulfim_, while the rest covered our path of escape back to the Quarter in case of any flanking attacks by the Vajra.

Skull and Pixie squadrons weren't on either of those duties however – in order to keep the Vajra from regrouping and regaining their momentum we were tasked with making hit and run attacks on the swarm. For the next few minutes we had fell into a comfortable pattern - Luca would identify where the Vajra were gathering and our combined squadrons (minus Ozma, who'd made his way back to the Quarter to re-arm after his pyrotechnic display earlier had depleted his missile stores) would storm in, lay down a hail of cannon fire and micro-missiles, destroying the knot of Vajra creatures before disengaging before Vajra reinforcements could overwhelm us. Rinse and repeat.

"Alright," called Luca over the comm, "the next group is twenty seven degrees relative to Pixie leader."

A green waypoint tag appeared on my HUD, which I immediately minimised. We hadn't quite finished up with the bunch we were already dealing with, and I was currently occupied drawing the attention of two red Vajra while the rest of our combined squadron attempted to bring them down. My lead pursuer had dropped a volley of those weird biological missiles into the void, which had added another interesting dimension to the chase while my backup settled their gunsights, and just to take it a step further, a glance over my shoulder showed that the other creature following me had decided to bring out the big guns - it's anti-ship weapon was glowing yellow and levelled at me.

I fed power into my lower nosecone manoeuvring thrusters and my upper wing thrusters, igniting them in a burst of blue and pulling myself into an upward bank. I glanced behind me. The Vajra charging it's anti-ship weapon adjusted it's vector to track me, but the manoeuvre was terminally cut short as a blue streak burst through it's chest carapace, igniting the gland storing it's imitation cannon shells.

"Good shot Mikhail," I told the sniper down the comm, even as the swarm of analogue missiles closed in on me. I maintained my arc of motion, and began to feed odo into the currently retracted battled hip joints. When the missiles had closed to within a hundred metres (and incidentally, close enough to cause my circuits to resonate - maybe I could use that to aid in timing my evasion of said missiles later), I engaged the transformation sequence to GERWALK and brought the legs up _hard_, much harder than they were rated for, the main thrusters suddenly throwing mega Newtons of force against my direction of travel rather than with it, tightening my turn dramatically and pushing my I.S.C. storage up to full. Analogue missiles overshot me, their white trails cutting a pattern through the void in front of my cockpit as they tried to compensate for my adjusted vector. Reinforcing my body to withstand the G-forces, I flipped my Messiah into battloid mode and rolled it over to face the missiles as they swung back around towards me. I brought the gunpod up and squeezed the trigger, spraying a hail of shells into the analogue missiles. The results were predictable - the analogue missiles detonated prematurely as they were shot down.

The red Vajra tailing me was tagged by a yellow marker on my HUD, indicating that someone had a targeting lock on it - but that unfortunately wouldn't do me much good. My expedient deceleration must have taken the creature by surprise, as it was almost on top of me now and travelling at a fair rate of knots. Any attempt to shoot it down now would have a more than decent chance of catching me in the fire as well.

Still, I doubted it would be a challenge.

I drew on my circuits again, this time feeding odo into my gunpod - filling the imperfections in it's frame with the pure essence of magecraft, strengthening it in order that it may fulfil it's duty. The Vajra creature came on me fast, one of it's claws extended over it's angular head, telegraphing the strike it planned to make incredibly clearly. As the claw swung down on my VF-25, I raised my gunpod to parry the blow. The frame of my Messiah shuddered violently in protest as the greater momentum of the Vajra was transferred to it, but the gunpod held firm under the strike, no doubt surprising the creature who would have expected it to be shredded. I used the my barrel of my gunpod as leverage to swing in close to the beast, and in one smooth movement I let go of the gunpod, engaged my knife, twisted on the spot to build up momentum and drove the bladed weapon deep into the throat of the creature. Our quick tango was completed when my Messiah scooped the gunpod back up, planted a boot on the carapace of the spasming creature and launched off, transforming back to fighter mode as I did so. The creature was gratifyingly wiped out in a pair of flowerburst explosions as soon as I was clear.

"Nice moves Shirou," Klan commented. "Have you considered upsizing to try a real battlesuit?"

Klan had a firmly entrenched pride in the martial superiority of zentraedi weapons, so I had no doubt in my mind that she was talking about the Regulant powered armour suit that was the mainstay of male zentraedi forces in the Spacey. I allowed myself to grin on the comm holo in reply. "And miss out on flying possibly one of the sweetest fighters in the galaxy? Not likely. Thanks for the assist by the way."

As we powered along to our next intercept target, Klan shot a grin back at me. "Hey, it's your loss," she chuckled.

Despite the levity of my reply, I couldn't really bring myself to truly feel how I was sounding. There were still hundreds of Vajra swarming around, and eventually they'd get their act together and then we'd be in for a real fight. I glanced out of the cockpit and noticed that the _Kaitos_ had really put some distance between the Vajra and itself. I idly pushed my Messiah into a looping roll to avoid some stray imitation cannon fire and checked the scopes to see how close the _Kaitos_ was to getting past the fold fault prohibiting it's swift departure - sure I could see the ship itself better with my eyes, but I couldn't see fold faults.

Huh. It was about twenty seconds from reaching the safe fold zone, with no Vajra even remotely near enough to pose a threat. Score one, humans.

"What the…" Luca exclaimed over the comm, sounding more than a bit surprised. "A de-fold reaction?" It seemed like he was talking to himself more than relaying information - the kid was definitely distracted. "But, that's impossible… It's coming right through the fault."

Wait. What?

A large purple pattern superimposed itself on the void above the plane of our rescue operation. It widened rapidly, and within a short period of time a bulbous white cone was poking its way through the de-fold gate.

And it just kept coming. And coming. I felt my eyes widen as what was clearly a Vajra battleship emerged into the void. The ship had a white bulbous prow, which terminated at the rear in what I assumed to be a large pair of streamlined reactors, or their biological equivalent, in any case. Slung underneath the prow was an angular protrusion - almost like a stabilising keel on a water bound ship. Even as it emerged from the de-fold gate, it's prow split menacingly into two, which I immediately likened to some enormous predator opening it's maw before devouring a meal. A green-yellow glow of scintillating energy briefly worked itself into existence deep down the 'throat' of the ship (for want of a better word) - I didn't have to be a Vajra expert to tell that an energy weapon was being charged up.

I followed the vector of the enemy ship, trying to ascertain it's target. There was only one target in the firing line.

The _Kaitos_.

A fraction of a second after I'd determined that fact, a lance of yellow-green light punched a hole straight through the reactors of the escaping ship. There was a pregnant pause for a second or so, almost as if the inanimate ship hadn't quite realised it was dead yet - but then a ball of nuclear fire engulfed the _Kaitos_.

What.

The.

Fuck.

At that point it was hard to say which emotion had the better of me - pure disbelief or unfiltered rage. Less than ten seconds ago we were in control of the flow of battle, our defences were solid and we were about to get our weakest link of out the combat space. Now a ship that was once full of refugees was nothing more than a tangle of molten steel and space dust. To make matters worse, our lines were cut in two - between our previous strongpoint, the _Dulfim,_ and the Quarter sat the beastly looking Vajra battleship, one that was now spewing out the larger red and smaller white types we were used to seeing.

Damn cheating Vajra! Our assumptions that Vajra fold technology was limited in the same manner that ours was allowed us to fall into the trap of thinking the fold fault would be a safe zone from surprise de-folds. By changing the rules of the game, the Vajra had caught us with our pants down. Being caught out like that made me angry at myself for not thinking of the possibility that could happen, but that anger was dwarfed by the pure rage I felt at watching the Vajra annihilate a ship full of innocent people in the blink of an eye. In that ship was someone human, someone's lover, friend or enemy even - someone's most important person in the world, and now they never had the chance to say goodbye - to talk that one last time. Someone's Rin Tohsaka.

Rin.

Revenge.

Destroy the enemies of humanity so that they may never hurt again.

I immediately brought my Messiah around on an intercept vector for the enemy battleship and dialled all the available power into my main engine lines, sending myself head first into a hail of incoming fire from the battleship's escorts. A flip of a switch later and I had set my micro-missile launcher's system to automatically designate three missiles per target. My eyes danced across the HUD as I transformed into GERWALK mode, using the superior thruster control inherent of that flight mode to aid in my evasion of incoming fire.

Through a red haze of anger I belatedly realised that the newest target markers I was dropping on my HUD were blinking red then disappearing - I'd already tagged enough Vajra to empty my missile racks the second I hit the trigger.

"-irou! Shirou! What are you doing!"

I blinked. Someone was trying to contact me - trying to prevent me from taking my revenge on those that would destroy humanity.

"Shirou! Rally at my marker! _Do not fire that salvo!_"

I snarled in rage. The voice didn't know what it was talking about - I would break through the Vajra line, force my way into the core of the battleship, kill it, prevent it from killing any more people. I poured odo into the hip joints of the VF-25's frame and flooded my muscles as well, bracing them for the G-forces that years of instinct told me would soon be affecting my body. Instinctively, I pulled my Messiah up hard, the automatic pinpoint barrier catching a round of imitation cannon fire near where the port wing met the fuselage as the line of fire it belonged to swept past me. It was the work of a second to complete a transformation down to battloid mode, which in turn allowed my ride the ability to fire from all the micro-missile launchers hanging off my craft.

"Shit! He's going to do it! Mikhail, get ready to shoot down the missiles heading for the one that's got Luca!"

What?

I shook my head once and hesitated for a second over the trigger. Forcing away some of the anger I was riding, I scanned my HUD again - a fleeing red Vajra that I had tagged earlier had trapped the green RVF-25 that belonged to Skull Three in some kind of transparent substance. There was no way I could fire those missiles – the barrage would kill one more person. I went to untag the creature, but I was out of time - my hesitation to fire had given the swarm in front of me enough time to fix their weapons on me again. I pushed away more of my anger as I fed power into my thruster lines and pulled away from the swarm, towards a waypoint marker on my HUD.

"Sorry Ozma," I apologised on the comm.

"No time to worry about it now," Ozma shot back, all business.

And he was right. In the time it had taken to complete that exchange, I had successfully disengaged the Vajra escort and were leading some pursuers away towards the waypoint marker tagged in my HUD. I craned my head over my shoulder, keeping out of the spray of imitation cannon fire pouring in from the creatures tailing me rather easily. Just as I managed to lay eyes on the battleship, it's maw closed gently. At least now it's beam weapon wouldn't be a problem for a bit.

"Did you see that?" Ozma roared. "It devoured Skull Three!"

I grunted as my anger flared. Apparently that transmission wasn't for our benefit though - within seconds Catherine Glass was on the comm with us. "It was shot down?" she asked shortly.

"No! It was," a pause as our Squadron Commander tried to find the right word to describe the action I'd missed, "_eaten_ by that mothership!"

"Luca!" roared Saotome. I brought my eyes back to the front, where I quickly spotted Saotome's VF-25 heading towards me on a pillar of blue fire. I glanced back over my shoulder to shake my tails - the HUD had yellow targeting tags hanging over the four smaller forms and one red Vajra following me. I immediately pushed my Messiah below the plane Saotome was using to approach me and grinned as fifteen missiles split the space above me, followed by the blue and white frame of Saotome's bird. Looks like the kid was getting the hang of this.

And again, that odd resonance on my circuits started playing as Saotome sped over the top of me. It almost felt like… no. No. It couldn't be. That would just be stupid.

Unfortunately for us, it seemed that knocking out my pursuers was part of a grander plan for Saotome - the same kind of plan I had only a few seconds before. Saotome continued on his vector, diving into the torrent of fire that only seconds ago I'd been escaping from.

"Skull Five: pull back!" Ozma ordered.

Saotome wasn't having a bar of it, roaring incoherently on the comm as he pushed deeper and deeper into the Vajra escort. Suddenly the battleship itself started spraying fire everywhere, in an extremely passable (and extremely dangerous) imitation of an anti-fighter barrage that our own capital ships would deliver. By now I mostly had my emotions boxed up and stored away - I was thinking rationally now. It was unusual that I had lost my cool in that manner - there was absolutely nothing I could have done to save those people on the _Kaitos_, so there was no need to get worked up about it so much that I became blind to the fact that one of my allies had been captured by the enemy.

Then again, there was all sorts of unusual going on with this battle. I just had to focus on finishing it safely and then I could afford to sit down and think it out.

"Alto, that damn ship is like a hedgehog! Pull back!" This time it was Mikhail's attempt to try and talk Saotome down, but he had as much success as Ozma had - that is to say basically none at all.

"Hedgehog or whatever, it's got Luca!" the young actor pointed out at the top of his lungs. By now I had reversed my vector and was heading back in after him - and I wasn't the only one with the same idea. A quick check of my scopes confirmed that the Squad Commander and Mikhail were moving up as well. "All I have to do is get inside of it!"

Saotome's white, red and black Messiah was dancing around incoming fire now - I watched the kid as he twisted and dodged and transformed his way out of the path of cannon shells, and somehow even found time to go on the offensive in battloid mode, pulling up smartly and hosing down a white Vajra that was bodily attempting to block his path.

"Mikhail, Canaria, Shirou: cover him!" ordered our fearless leader, having apparently come to the decision that Saotome wasn't going to be reined in the same way I was earlier.

"Skull Four to Skull Leader: requesting permission to follow Skull Five in. I'll make sure he gets out alive," I asked of Ozma, all business. I had no doubt Ozma would have done the same thing himself, but he was a fair way back, and there was no way his fully rearmed Armoured FAST Pack toting VF-25 would catch up with the half empty Super FAST Pack equipped units that Saotome and myself were piloting. Besides, keeping Luca and Saotome was part of my job (the most lives saved is the purpose of Alaya's existence after all) and I stood a much better chance of fulfilling that charge if I could keep my eye on Saotome as he infiltrated the ship.

"Permission granted, Skull Four. Get in there," replied Ozma.

"Thanks Ozma," I told him, allowing a modicum of gratitude into my voice. Alaya knows that he didn't have to allow my request considering that barely less than a minute ago I was so out of control I almost shot down the youngest member of our squadron. It was gratifying to know that Ozma still trusted me after that, that's for sure.

Saotome had a head start on me, but that wouldn't last long - he had the attention of the majority of the battleship's escort swarm, and as it was he was spending most of his time on the defensive, trying to find a path he could thread his way though. I drew deeply on my circuits, reinforced my main engine lines and overrode the power limiters, pushing them to the absolute limit - the limit that had been determined during stress testing all those weeks ago. As I closed in on the blue haired boy, blue streaks from over my shoulder slammed into Vajra moving to block my path. The results of Mikhail's shooting weren't uniform. Some of the creatures shrugged off the shots, others exploded as the sniper rounds penetrated munitions glands, others simply went silent. Regardless, I rocketed past them, cutting off my main thruster lines now that the Messiah had hit top speed.

Ahead of me Saotome was piloting like a man possessed. Despite being on the defensive against an absolutely phenomenal amount of incoming fire, the boy was still slowly making his way towards the battleship. I activated the micro-missile targeting system for the second time in as many minutes, and ran my eyes all over the HUD, dropping targeting markers on the units closest to Saotome and a number of Vajra obstructing our approach the the battleship.

"Saotome, as soon as this barrage hits, be ready to head straight in," I warned the boy. A distracted grunt was the only reply I got as the boy transformed into battloid mode, barely evading a white creature that had come in to attack with it's flagellum. The white Messiah with red and black trimming punished it with an extended burst from the gunpod at the same moment I pulled the trigger, emptying my missile racks in four extended salvoes. The micro-missiles snaked their way towards their targets, ducking this way and that as their targeting programs tracked a mixture of efficient and chaotic courses, calculated in such a way as to minimise the effects of defensive fire.

Yellow-red explosions lit up both in a crescent around Saotome and in a direct line from him to the mothership. I stifled down a snort - the pattern of destruction inadvertently reminded me of the shape of my Command Spells, way back in the Holy Grail War. A Vajra from the flanks then proceeded to drop some of those analogue missiles into the void and they quickly began to home in Saotome. I transformed into GERWALK mode and levelled my gunpod at the analogue missiles, but a line of accurate imitation cannon fodder forced me back into fighter mode and out of position in order to keep myself alive.

I needn't have worried. As the missiles closed in on the kid he ejected his FAST Pack, transformed into fighter mode and took off on a curving arc towards the battleship. The missiles detonated harmlessly on his ejected FAST pack, and a string of cannon tracers from one of our backup units behind me tore the offending creature into a frozen blue paste.

Saotome completed his final approach to the battleship at high pace and high volume, his path now temporarily cleared of any obstacles and his lungs expelling all their contents in a n incoherent battle-cry typical of Saotome. I pulled in behind him as he let rip with his cannon, the extended burst from his gunpod gouging out a deep hole in the side of the bulbous white ship. The kid himself took a glancing hit from the defensive anti-fighter barrage being put out by the battleship, tearing a chunk out of his starboard wing. The wasn't much either of us could do about that, and neither was it currently relevant - it might make atmospheric flight more difficult, but space-borne manoeuvring was the realm of thrusters, and there were redundant thrusters everywhere on a Messiah.

By now I was tight up on Saotome and could feel that resonance on my magic circuits again - there was a definite pattern to it, and now that I had more than half a second to work with, I found I could easily recall where I had felt the pattern.

It was a beat for a song.

The song 'Infinity', as sung by Sheryl Nome to be precise.

* * *

The next instant, Saotome and myself were inside the Vajra battleship. Thankfully the cavern we'd entered had enough room to bring ourselves to a safe halt, which we did, pulling up around a tunnel out in battloid mode.

"Saotome," I began, opening a two way comm channel between us. "This is unknown territory. Leave this channel open at all times."

"Acknowledged," the boy responded sharply. I glanced around the cavern we were in - there was nothing particularly distinguishing about it and there was an unusual lack of activity. I had been expecting some sort of Vajra welcoming committee at the very least, but even that wasn't the case. I shrugged mentally - maybe the vast majority of it's escort compliment were out in space right now, which would just mean there'd be delay before defensive forces reached us.

"We're going to have to do this quick," I told Saotome, ignoring the constant beat of Sheryl Nome on my magic circuits. "You're on point, I'll cover our six."

Under usual situations, point is the most dangerous job in an advance. Under these situations however, with a defensive force chasing you down and able to approach you from unexpected directions, they were probably both as dangerous as the other, and while I trusted the kid's judgement as he was advancing there were just too many ways we could be surprised from behind than I was comfortable with letting him deal with.

"Roger," Saotome replied and set off confidently down the tunnel.

I glanced at my scopes as I followed behind Saotome, my gunpod waving menacingly back down the way we came. Comm channels from the outside had been cut off, along with most tactical feeds. About the only information penetrating the hull of this ship were the tags describing the position of the Quarter and the _Dulfim_.

Battleships and carriers had much more powerful IFF transponders than fighters did, and it was far less complicated to transmit a beacon than verbal communications, so it made sense that I couldn't track our smaller units outside, nor tap into the comm network. Deeper inside the ship Skull Three's IFF gave us an objective, and radar pinging had mapped out a likely path through the tunnel system that Saotome was leading me down.

Quietly, I began humming along to the song that was playing itself on my magic circuits before I realised what I was doing. I quickly stopped.

The kid was doing a good job of advancing quickly yet carefully. He'd check each corner by slaving the optical camera on the nose of his gunpod into his HUD and poke that out first before advancing. We'd rounded three corners before we ran into a bit of a conundrum.

"Cannibalism?" Saotome asked, almost to himself. In the corridor around the corner there must have been corpses. "No," he continued quietly, "can't be. There's scorch marks and bullet holes on the wall."

"Show me the feed," I ordered the boy. A second later a holo popped up in my cockpit and sure enough, two Vajra corpses were staining the floor. The battle damage Saotome noted looked fresh, but there was no way to confirm that one way or the other with the tools at our disposal. Either way, they were dead.

"They're not a threat. Lets keep moving." It was a mystery, to be sure - just another one to be added to the growing list of crap happening today to be analysed later.

We reached the chamber containing Luca in just over a minute. Saotome poked his gunpod around the final corner, then just as quickly rolled into the chamber, firing. I quickly checked our six on more time, confirming there was nothing of immediate importance behind us, then I brought my attention back around to the front where imitation cannon fire drew a neat line of explosions into the floor between Saotome and myself.

I poked out of cover with my gunpod raised and immediately spotted Luca at the back of the room we were in. His RVF-25 was in GERWALK mode, suspended awkwardly from the ceiling, wrapped in tendrils of that weird transparent substance that he'd initially been captured in.

Possibly slightly more urgent were the two white Vajra taking shots at Saotome. The kid had his shield arm up and was firing down at the left creature, but a pair of imitation cannon rounds impacting on his shield arm threw off his aim. The creature on the right swung it's weapon towards me, but I had it beaten on the draw. My gunpod rumbled the frame of my Messiah as it spat shells towards my target, the actual kill shot tearing into the head of the creature.

By that time, Saotome had impressively managed to bring his aim back under control despite being under hostile fire – a muzzle flash from his gunpod marked the end of our second opponent.

"Nice shooting Saotome," I complimented the kid, "you kept your head nicely there."

"Thanks," he muttered sullenly, although I could have sworn I heard a thread of pride in there.

"I've got this," I told the blue haired pilot as I strode into the room. "Check your damage then watch our six."

There were a couple of ways to go about this, but today I was in favour of the simplest solution, so I raised my gunpod again. We didn't have time to study what was going on (why the Vajra had bothered to capture Luca, or what that transparent material holding him was), so the best thing to do would be to cut him free, slave his unit to one of ours and get out. The holo in my HUD that I'd dedicated to examining our L.A.I. liaison's unit had just shown me that he was out cold, which removed the ability for him to get out under his own power.

A flicker of movement off to the side caught my attention, and I immediately forced the legs of my battloid to push me backwards – a fraction too late as it turned out. A lance of red energy neatly bisected my gunpod as my Messiah fell backwards. The blast must cooked off some of the chambered shells, because no sooner had I released the now useless weapon it tore itself apart in a small explosion, peppering my falling Messiah with debris.

This was not an ideal situation, I realised as I flooded odo into the left manipulator arm and it's joints. Normally when a battloid goes arse-over-tit, any attempt to brace against the manipulator arms during the fall usually ends up with the arm crushed under the weight of the rest of the frame. There were documented occasions where the angle of the fall caused a lucky bounce instead of crushing the arm entirely, but said occasions happened about once every twenty falls.

So I fixed the odds.

The reinforced arm held as I crashed into the ground and continued to hold as I applied thruster power to balance out the backwards motion then combined a push with the balancing hand and a hit of my thrusters in order to spring into the air upside down - twisting to face my attacker at the same time. The movement was borderline impossible for a battloid, which is what saved me from the second shot that drilled into the floor a few metres under my VF-25's head unit.

My eyes widened in surprise – my enemy was definitely not what I expected to see.

A variable fighter.

One that I didn't recognise _at all._

Seriously. Fuck this battle.

The dark crimson fighter was in battloid form and pointing a long rifle at me. Given the rounds being fired at me, I guessed it was some kind of particle weapon. The shape of the battloid was bulkier and more upright than our VF-25's, which could _possibly_ indicate it was designed primarily for combat in space, but more likely was a result of other technical considerations. Battloids just didn't share obvious identifying characteristics in the same way fighters did.

With a heavy thud, I completed the flip I'd started. My opponent was still tracking me with his rifle, so I pumped hard on the thrusters again, changing the direction of my motion, just as another streak of red burst forth from the rifle and this time punching clean through the forearm of the manipulator arm I'd reinforced a fraction of a second earlier.

That made me _really_ glad I'd dodged the earlier two shots – if it could break a reinforced and conversion energy shielded manipulator arm, I probably didn't want to have taken the first one through the cockpit.

"Saotome," I roared, now advancing on the red VF with a thruster assisted leap, "Secure Luca while I keep this guy busy! Secure his VF-25 well if you can!"

The channel had been open the entire time, and just at that particular moment music began to pour through from his side of the connection. Not just any music – it was the climax of Sheryl singing 'Infinity', in perfect synch with same song that had been playing a beat on my circuits.

"Music?" The young boy said quietly. I could almost feel the confused shake of the head from here. "I-I mean roger!" he recovered quickly, confirming my order.

The music continued playing over the comm, but there were more pressing matters to worry about. I had lost my knife as well as my gunpod, and my missile racks were empty, but I'd finally gotten my balance back. My opponent in the red VF appeared to realise this as well, and apparently judged that his recharge cycle for the rifle would take too long to safely get another shot off. Blue thruster wake blistered the ground my opponent was standing on for a fraction of a second before the crimson variable fighter leapt into the air and _over_ my head.

The move wasn't surprising – in fact, I was expecting it. With his back to the wall, it made sense to relocate to a position he could easily flee from, especially now that his surprise attack had failed. In this particular chamber, that meant the corridor directly behind me, so as soon as the red battloid had hit the air I twisted my Messiah around and poured as much power into the main thrusters as possible, closing the gap between myself and the corridor as fast as possible.

The red variable fighter landed immediately in front of the edge of the corridor, it's rifle raised at me. A quick transformation threw off my opponent's aim and a shot split the air above the lower height profile of the GERWALK mode.

"_Chase him down once agaaaaaain!_" Never before had I fought to a musical accompaniment, but as I charged down my opponent with nothing but one and a half manipulator arms, I had to admit, this one of Sheryl's songs seemed to fit quite nicely with my current situation.

The crimson variable fighter realised a millisecond too late what was coming for him – he tried to roll away into the cover of the corridor, but the reinforced edge of my intact manipulator arm lead the rest of my VF-25 into his unit with a bone jarring impact.

My momentum combined with his sideways motion meant that I didn't get quite the angle or power I'd been hoping to get with the ram – rather than slamming the both of us into the back wall in close combat, he'd been driven awkwardly away from me, further down the corridor. Within a second or so I'd be in an exposed position when my opponent recovered, so I immediately angled my thruster pedals to pull back into the main chamber.

My opponent took that opportunity to retreat, at least according to my radar. That was a good thing for me – I'd run out of ideas to fight him off that didn't involve open displays of magecraft, and seeing as I'd already done that in front of Saotome before, well, I wouldn't like the chances of lying my way out of it again. Still, at least we'd solved the mystery of the Vajra corpses earlier – they must have run afoul of my new friend.

I glanced back over my shoulder towards Saotome. He'd just finished freeing Luca's RVF-25 and slaving it to his Messiah. I zoomed a holo on my HUD in at Luca's cockpit – the young boy was still out of it.

At that moment, my HUD lit up – in addition to the IFF tags of the _Dulfim _and the Quarter, my HUD was showing IFF tags of at least six cruiser tonnage ships from the 1st Defence Fleet – they must have just folded in.

"Well that's finally a break for us," I said aloud, mostly for the benefit of Saotome, who mightn't appreciate the significance of overwhelming force if it hit him in the face with a brick. "There shouldn't be any problems cleaning up now that the big guns are here."

"That's all well and good for the guys outside," he replied, as the song wound down in his audio feed. I saw him reach forward in his EX-gear to tap the earring with a raised eyebrow. Oh boy, did I _now_ have some ideas about that earring that I was hoping to test soonish. "Fail to see how it helps us in here though," he shrugged, sinking back into his cockpit.

"Pass me Luca's gunpod," I commanded. "We'll hole up here and wait for our boys to crack this like a bad egg," I finished confidently. We were in a room with one entrance – with ammo it would be easy to hold for the ten minutes or so it would take for the combined Spacey and SMS forces to assault this battleship.

Before Saotome had a chance to toss me Luca's weapon, the fading beat of Sheryl's song on my circuits was drowned out by a torrential surge of resonating noise – so powerful that my control over them was forcibly ripped away from me, making my head spin. This was entirely different to forcing my circuits to take more than they could handle – my experiences in the Grail War had let me know that was a pain that pervaded my entire body as odo overflowed from my circuits. In this case it was as though someone had snatched control of my circuits then turned them off – for a second I felt incredibly dazed and confused, as though my mind wasn't perfectly balanced and it was messing with my other senses, particularly my sense of vision.

Everything exploded into white for a fraction of a second, and as my sight came back I felt something was wrong, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Depth perception maybe?

As I attempted to blink the depth perception back into my eyes, I realised with a growing sense of disgruntlement that my eyes weren't the problem – reality was displaced on top of itself. To top that off, everything in the room was covered in a purple glow.

We'd just folded.

* * *

Author's notes:

_Well, that went quicker than expected, slightly less than a month between updates. Pure action this time, and a lot of it. Shirou seems to be taking most of it on the chin – firstly his circuits playing up, then his flip-out, Brera wanting a piece of him too and finally getting folded away on a Vajra battleship. He mightn't be able to get a chance to contemplate each of those events next chapter either, I have a feeling he'll still be in combat mode for most of it, shoving those details away to examine later. Rest assured, it will happen though!_

_Bonus points(*) if you can figure out what's causing Shirou's circuits to play up. It seems like a few things, but I swear there's only one underlying reason there!_

_On the other character front, sadly there wasn't much interaction this chapter. Alto seems to be rash as ever when it comes to getting in after his friends, although he is definitely beginning to show signs of his potential as a pilot. Ozma, Canaria and Michel are just as bad-ass as expected, and what chapter would be complete without some random banter between Shirou and the Pixies._

_I also hope this chapter highlighted the status of Skull and Pixie squadrons for those of you who came in with just a FSN background. SMS in general (and those squadrons in particular) are the cream of the elite units in the Macross Frontier story, and regularly pull off all sorts of badass as the season progresses :)_

_Thanks again for the reviews, and I hope you enjoyed the read!_

_(*) Bonus points are not redeemable. For anything._


	10. Belligerent Repulsion

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 10: Belligerent Repulsion

* * *

"We've just folded," Saotome stated over the comm, his voice rising in a questioning tone - he clearly didn't quite believe the evidence his eyes were presenting him with.

I ignored his well thought out observation briefly in favour of trying to open my magic circuits again - I had recovered my mental balance enough that I judged it was safe to try to open them, and to be honest, I was feeling kind of naked without access to my odo in a battle. I guess being suddenly 'mortal' was an unusual thing for my mind to adapt to, which in an of itself was probably more worrying than not being able to access my circuits. As soon as I had begun the process to open my circuits however, it became clear that I wouldn't be able to rely on them in the foreseeable future - the backlash from trying to draw even a trickle of odo made my head spin. Disregarding that endeavour, I turned my attention back to Saotome's earlier remark.

"Well spotted," I replied with a groan, dropping my face into the palm of my hand at the same time. The action was partly an attempt to recover my composure after trying to access my circuits, but mostly an outburst indicating that my patience with the situation in general had reached the end of it's tether. "What tipped you off?"

The holo of Saotome bristled a little bit at that. Perhaps I could have been a bit more diplomatic, but at this point hiding my exasperation wasn't likely to hurt our situation. Saotome's eyebrows furrowed and his eyes narrowed as he went to respond in what I assumed would be the typical loud and unconstrained Saotome fashion.

Instead, I watched as the blue haired pilot took a deep breath and let the anger drain from his face, to be replaced with a superior grin. "Nice to see you drop the mask for a change," he said.

Internally I cursed the young pilot for being so perceptive when it came to reading me. The situation we were in certainly wasn't one of the most life-threatening I'd ever been in, seeing as I was still wearing all four limbs and my vital organs were still residing where they belonged, but I was shaken a bit - just enough to prevent me from stifling my innate sarcasm. Saotome must have realised that, although how he picked that for me being 'normal' I have no idea.

"You got me," I replied deadpan, rolling my eyes as I did so. At this point it didn't matter that Saotome could see through the lies I'd hidden my true personality behind - the main thing was to determine where this Vajra ship was going, and how to get the three of us out of here safely. Maintaining my public face was distinctly a secondary priority now that our resident rookie pilot had seen through it. "Now hurry up with that gunpod."

The snap in my order immediately brought Saotome back to earth. The holo of his face became distracted as he played with his controls, then a pair of markers appeared on my HUD that encompassed both Messiahs - Saotome had slaved Luca's green RVF-25 to his own VF-25, a process which would in effect make the RVF-25 mimic the motions of it's master unit. In response, the RVF-25 immediately transformed to match the battloid mode Saotome was currently using and the blue haired pilot quickly liberated the gunpod from the metal fingers of the green Messiah, sending it bouncing onto the floor.

I scooped the weapon up in the left manipulator arm of my variable fighter - the damage caused by my own gymnastics less than a minute ago had damaged the right hand, destroying the weaponry interface contacts in the process. After using all my missiles, losing my knife in an insignificant scuffle and having my gunpod ripped apart in a failed surprise attack, it was felt somewhat relieving to get my hands on a weapon again. The on-board computers interfaced quickly with the scavenged gunpod and linked it into my remaining ammunition reserves as I scanned the room for any new threats. It came up clear.

"So where are we folding to?" My companion asked.

"Saotome, you're not asking the right question," I replied quickly, my mind whirring. "Not only don't I know the answer to that, but it's completely irrelevant to our current situation. Try again!"

I shouldn't have snapped there, but Saotome's general inability to grasp the situation and his dismal skill at grasping strategic and tactical realities had just pushed me to breaking point. We were stuck in an enemy battleship, I'd just been through a battle that felt as completely unexplainable as my opening skirmishes in the Grail War, my unit was damaged and almost out of ammunition, and he's asking _where the hell we're going!_

Focus, Shirou. Getting upset isn't going to help at this point in time. Deal with the hand you've been dealt. I took a deep, calming breath.

Even as Saotome's face screwed together in concentration, I was regathering my wits and running through the realities of our situation in our mind - receiving an ammunition count from my readout (very low), double checking Luca's status feed (still unconscious), attempting to place our location within the Vajra ship (we were definitely somewhere on it), basically the kind of useful information that would help us think our way out of here.

"How do we escape?" The kid offered, and I nodded in reply.

"That's a better starting point," I told him curtly, "but that isn't the whole question we need to answer," I continued thoughtfully. Now that I had some semblance of knowledge of our situation, I was allowing myself to do my thinking by guiding Saotome's thought processes. I could almost see the cogs whirring in his mind as he tried to extend his line of thought.

"How do we escape and make our way back to Frontier?" he asked.

"Much better," I confirmed for him. "Thoughts on how to do it?"

"We~ell," the boy began, "our last plan of holing up and waiting for our backup to open up this ship so we can get out is kind of moot now," he mused.

I dropped him a level stare. "Talking out possibilities will help, but stating the obvious is pretty pointless," I told him. I was trying to introduce the kid to thinking for himself in a combat situation, an ability that would be useful for him to have, yet incredibly difficult to learn _in situ_ as it were. As he was constantly proving, I reminded myself.

Saotome shot me a withering glare in response.

"The way I see it, we've got three options," the blue haired rookie began. "Firstly, we just wait it out until we get broken out by SMS or the N.U.N.S."

"And the reason we're not going to go with that plan is?" I asked Saotome.

"No-one knows where we are or where we'll de-fold," the kid said, a touch of exasperation entering his voice. "Look, I'm just listing the possibilities, I never said this was the best way to escape!"

"Carry on then," I said, emphasising my displeasure at his neural skills with a grunt. "But we're on a tight schedule, so try to stop beating around the bush."

"The other two options involve leaving this room and searching the ship for an escape method. The only question is timing - whether we wait to de-fold before we go exploring or not," the boy elaborated.

"Good thinking," I allowed neutrally, having already come up with those ideas. "Which do you consider to be the best?"

"We should start looking now," Saotome replied confidently. "Sure, it's not entirely wise to eject from a folding ship, but if we find a place to breech the hull, we can get out as soon as we've de-folded We're just wasting time here."

The kid had a point, but as usual he still wasn't seeing the entire situation. While moving would keep us busy, and Alaya knows staying in a dead end chamber wasn't really the most sound idea for a defensive posture (no matter how good you are, I had learned early in my abortive career as a magus, always have a backup escape route), the cons were stacked too heavily against that course of action.

"Actually, the better plan would be to wait here," I replied laconically, knowing that my casual dismissal of his idea would likely turn his anger up a notch or two. "Luca is currently nothing but a liability in an extended scouting sortie, as we'd either have to split and leave someone here to defend him, or slave his unresponsive unit to ours in combat. Secondly, we're so deep in enemy territory we may as well be wearing re-breathers - this location is secure and defensible, which is more than can be said for blindly wandering around an unknown enemy ship."

True to form, Saotome took the bait, his patience now entirely worn. "Well if you were going to shoot down my opinion, why did you ask me for it?" he raged, the volume of his voice rising in anger.

"To see if you could actually use that brain of yours for purposes other than pulling off some decent piloting," I told the kid with a grin. When the blue haired rookie began to splutter in rage I cut him off again. "Relax, you aren't _that_ bad at it. Strategic thinking really only comes with practice. Now keep your eyes on the entrance."

Now that our course of action had been decided, it was simply a matter of preparing the chamber defensively and waiting out the fold ride. As it turned out, the effort we put into our defence was entirely wasted - despite the fact our location should have been known to our Vajra hosts, not a single unit made it's way through the door during our eighteen minute fold ride, and my new friend in his red variable fighter decided to leave us alone. The de-fold itself happened rather unceremoniously - the purple glow bathing the room receded without warning, and the reality overlay snapped back into place. Instinctively I went to open one of my circuits and thankfully found that I was free to do so without any major repercussions.

I quickly opened a few more.

The question of where we'd folded to was easily answered as well. Barely a second after completing the de-fold operation, I.F.F. signals collected by the scopes on-board my Messiah were piping location and tag information of several human ships in the area onto my HUD, despite the fact all I could visually see were the walls of the chamber we were defending. There were several I recognised as belonging to NUNS cruisers and carriers - but the tags that really caught my eye were the ones in a neat little line of tags labelled _Island-One_ all the way through to _Island-Thirteen_.

The Vajra had folded us to Frontier.

"Well, that's not good," I muttered, raising an eyebrow. "Saotome, slave Skull-Three to your unit, it's time for us to get out of here."

Saotome's response died in his throat as the ceiling of our little room began to lift _up_, slowly opening us up to the void of space. I turned the cameras of my battloid form Messiah towards the tags on my HUD and sure enough I spotted the Frontier convoy powering steadily through space. A quick glance at the disposition of the NUNS defensive forces confirmed for me that the Vajra de-fold had been somewhat expected - the defensive fleet was mostly in escort position, and several larger ships were starting to come around to face the threat. Well, no time to worry about that - the ceiling had by now halted it's expansion, and if I had to guess, I'd say from the outside this ship would look like a giant maw.

Saotome and myself both knew what that meant.

"Time to get out of here," I roared through the comm, transforming into fighter mode as I did so.

"You don't have to tell me twice," came Saotome's reply, and the two of us hit the thrusters hard, bursting out of the ship on tails of nuclear fire, with Luca's RVF-25 mimicking Saotome's every movement. I threw a glance over my rear shoulder just in time to see the Vajra ship we were just in vomit out a massive beam of yellow particles, effortlessly punching a sizeable hole through the flagship of the 3rd defensive fleet, the _Damocles_. The shot thankfully appeared to have missed any critical areas - apart from a few rapidly dying flickers of fire around the massive wound that threatened to split the _Damocles_ in half, there was no indication of any secondary explosions, thank Alaya.

That wasn't the end of it though - another four beams erupted from an area in space _behind_ the Vajra ship we'd hitched a lift in on, and with a trill of anger I realised that our Vajra ship must have had a rendezvous with a small fleet in order to attack Frontier - it must have been making an attack of opportunity on the remnants of the Galaxy fleet on it's way here. The damage from the opening salvo from other ships in the Vajra fleet (I could clearly see now that all the Vajra ships were of the same type) was considerable. Three N.U.N.S. frigates had been caught by the salvo, the fourth shot narrowly missing a carrier. With those three ships out of commission, the defensive fleet line in the sector of the Frontier fleet would be seriously compromised until the escorts were reshuffled.

It was at that moment that the Vajra ships, capitalising on their opening alpha strike, began to disgorge swarm upon swarm of the red and white forms that I was much more familiar with dealing with. I checked my scopes again, comparing the vector Saotome and myself were taking to the opening scramble from the Vajra units - they were on an intercept vector for us, although whether that was because we were deliberately being chased or the Vajra were simply heading for Island One, which was also on their course, was something I couldn't answer.

"Battle Frontier to S.M.S. Skull squadron: status report."

It was the crisp voice of a female operator who was demanding a report through the comm, accompanied by a 'sound only' holo. I fought down the urge to shoot back that there seemed to be a bit of a Vajra problem in the local neighbourhood, and instead simply began listing the significant events that led up to our current situation.

"Skull Four, reporting in," I began, checking my thruster power and fighter velocity. "Skull Three was captured by Vajra during the attempt to rescue the Galaxy survivors. Skull Five and myself effected a rescue but were unable to exit the enemy ship before it folded. We were holed up in the ship for eighteen minutes until it de-folded and we disembarked while it was firing it's main gun. Skull Three is currently unconscious and slaved to Skull Five - I request that you bring him to a safe zone by remote control so we can more effectively join the defence."

There was a brief silence on the other end as my information and request was digested, a silence that was effectively broken when my unit was patched into the N.U.N.S. battle network, suddenly spamming my HUD with targeting data from every defensive ship in the convoy space.

"Request granted," came the operator's voice. "Taking control of Skull Three."

I glanced over my shoulder again, partly to have a proper look at the advancing Vajra swarm, and partly to see if they'd taken control of Luca's green RVF-25 correctly. Luca's green bird began to peel away towards Battle Frontier, which I noticed was beginning it's city disengage sequence, and with more than a little relief I also noted that the protective dome was coming down over Island One - it looked like the N.U.N.S. were learning from their earlier skirmishes with the Vajra. Before I could get back to deciphering the targeting data though, a holo of Saotome popped up in my cockpit.

"What's the plan?" The kid asked, with a touch of anxiousness in his voice. It was justified - we were out in the open, with waves of Vajra bearing down on us from behind, and the flimsiest of defences immediately ahead of us to hide behind once we got there.

"Keep going kid," I replied. My response was punctuated by a number of beeps from my HUD, the computer indicating to me that the thin line of N.U.N.S. defence directly in front of us was firing. I fired the manoeuvring thrusters of my Messiah, pushing me above the plane of defensive fire, avoiding the defensive barrage of the three frigates remaining between us and Island One. Seconds later five yellow beams lanced out underneath us, three of which pierced the N.U.N.S. ships, ending their barrage prematurely. The remaining two struck the protective shell of Island One, which thankfully held.

"Well, how about now?" The blue haired rookie asked, pulling his Messiah up tighter into formation with me. I frowned briefly as my circuits began to beat lightly, but pushed the frustration away. The N.U.N.S. forces were converging on the heavier Vajra ships, and through reinforcement of my eyes I could spot several squadrons of VF-171 Nightmares closing in from further down convoy space. The numbers were surprisingly against the Vajra in this confrontation, the only problem being that the N.U.N.S. were caught flat footed and had to spend precious time to bring their superior numbers to bear on the threat.

Which begged the question - why the hell didn't the Vajra get out while the going was still good for them? And the answer to that was reasonably simple, I figured - because they still thought they could achieve their objective. The amplitude of the beat in my circuits picked up, and I recognised the beat as another Sheryl Nome song - _Obelisk_, to be precise, and then rolled my eyes, telling myself it was a side effect of my research on her that allowed me to identify the song, not my affinity with current popular culture.

"Keep heading towards Island One. Whatever the Vajra objective is, it's happening on or to it," I replied. It had to be, or else their pattern of advance just didn't make sense. Sure enough, my gut feeling was vindicated (and not in a particularly good way) when another salvo of four beams split the void to blast a chunk out of the protective dome.

I dropped a tag over the breach in Island One's hull. "That's it! Get in there and defend the city," I ordered, even as I subtly fed odo into my engine lines to allow for a more serious acceleration and adjusted my own vector towards the hole. Quickly I spun my head around to try and determine why only four beams were used in the previous salvo and was somewhat gratified (and a little bit surprised, I'm not going to lie) to see the N.U.N.S. getting off their arses and doing their jobs - one of the Vajra battleships was missing a large chunk out of it's engine-like appendages.

The Vajra battleships ignored their stricken compatriot though, instead opting to power up for another round of beam shots. That was not going to be good - the self repairing gel was currently closing down the breach already inflicted in Island One's shell, and sure, while Saotome, myself and no doubt a few Vajra drones would make it in at the current repair rate, it wouldn't be _that_ many drones. More holes in the hull would allow in a lot more of the creatures, and had the potential to seriously ruin the biological stability of Frontier.

Even as I was contemplating that wonderful possibility, a lime green shimmer coated the shell of Island One. Good. Someone had raised the energy barrier, and not a moment too soon - the Vajra ships had fired again, concentrating their firepower around the already formed hole. The four beams slammed into the energy barrier, causing the shell of Island One to glow bright green as energies were directed and dissipated by the clashing particles. Perhaps if a pinpoint barrier were used the defensive barrier might have held completely, but the net result wasn't too damaging - the shields had overloaded after dissipating most of the attack, and the remaining energy from the attack had only widened the breach in the hull by a few metres.

I used the manoeuvring thrusters to adjust the orientation of my Messiah so that I was now facing the swarm while travelling backwards, rapidly closing in on the hole. "Saotome: be ready for anything on the inside. Power is most likely out in the colony, so be prepared to engage your infra-red scopes."

"Roger that," the blue haired kid replied, perhaps a little wildly.

Travelling backwards is an unusual sensation in space. By all rights, it's exactly the same as moving forwards and is subject to all the same manoeuvres, the only difference being which way your back is facing, which as Sir Isaac Newton will tell you matters not a whit to any observers in the external frame of reference. Having said that, human beings have evolved under gravity, with eyes facing forwards and instincts that say going backwards at high speeds usually doesn't bode well for your immediate future, so it takes a lot of training and time to get pilots comfortable with the idea of travelling backwards in combat.

I had gotten over those issues nigh on forty years ago.

I scanned the swarm as Saotome and I closed in on Island-One. They were hovering just outside my effective gunpod range, and with no missiles left I simply didn't have any options to whittle them down at the moment. That worked both ways though, as although imitation cannon shells were whipping past Saotome and myself, none of them were close to being on target. My HUD had picked up several biological missiles heading towards us however, which would be more of an issue.

"Saotome: you get in first, I'll cover our rear," I ordered.

There was a grunt of acknowledgement over the comm, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Saotome put on a touch more power and pull out of my sight. I briefly entertained the idea of switching to battloid to shoot down the incoming missiles, but threw it away – I'd never transform back to fighter mode before I was in Island-One, and trying to bleed speed in battloid mode wasn't going to end well. Instead, I simply ejected the now useless components of the Super FAST Pack my Messiah was equipped with as the missiles closed in – whatever they had that passed for proximity detonators went off as they passed by the FAST Pack components, buffeting my ride but otherwise leaving me unscathed. I quickly glanced over my shoulder, played the thrusters lightly to make final vector adjustments and shot through the hole in Island-One.

While travelling backwards in space is perfectly fine for fighter mode VF's, it's a different story in atmosphere – fighter mode VF's, and the Messiah more so than other recent designs, are first and foremost designed to work aerodynamically in an atmosphere. At higher speeds, this means they rely on aerodynamics to keep them in the air – and the rear profile of a variable fighter isn't typically designed with aerodynamics in mind.

This was a point that entered my mind at the very last second before I sailed through the breach.

My Messiah immediately tried to flip end over end as soon as it transitioned into the atmosphere, a process that wasn't helped by the gale winds caused by the outrushing atmosphere. Try as I might though, I simply couldn't regain control of my bird - and fighting with my controls all the way, my momentum and the buffeting winds threw me haphazardly across the city. My fighter tumbled end over end until I regained enough control over my flight path to transform into GERWALK mode, where the extra main thruster control quickly brought me to a halt.

I glanced up at the hole in the protective shell – Vajra were now pouring through it, even as it closed, to be met with sporadic lines of cannon fire from destroids on the ground. I was well out of range of the fight, which clearly wasn't going well for the N.U.N.S. mecha – the small number of units that had been scrambled were quickly isolated and wiped out by small groups of the Vajra swarm.

I quickly took note of my surroundings. I was currently holding position some five hundred metres or so above the ground, somewhere above one of the nondescript outer residential areas. The city was mostly dark, indicating some kind of power outage, barring the ruddy red light used for emergency lighting. The one clear exception to this was the Griffith Park Stadium, the site of Sheryl's concert providing a veritable beacon of light in all the colours of the rainbow. I took one more look at the almost closed hole in the protective shell, and just as it closed a wash of yellow fire momentarily illuminated the inky void – indication that the N.U.N.S. were beginning the clean up of the swarm outside, a indication backed up by the dozens of tags of individual VF-171's my HUD was throwing up everywhere.

I quickly squelched tagging from units outside of the colony ship – they were irrelevant now. Suddenly the number of friendly tags on my HUD almost disappeared, revealing a handful of destroids moving into position. Saotome's tag was a couple of kilometres from me and considerably closer to the Vajra swarm, the kid presumably having an easier time making it into the city than I did.

That left the Vajra – my tags counted six of the larger red types and twenty of the smaller white creatures, all making a beeline towards...

Griffith Park Stadium. It was hard to see them possibly going anywhere else – the stadium was lit up like a futuristic bonfire.

I swore quietly before transforming into fighter mode and pulling into an intercept vector with the swarm. My ammunition reserves wouldn't be enough to take out all of them, so I opened my comm. "Skull Four to Battle Frontier: Requesting fire support in the city."

I was expecting an immediate reply, but not of the form that I received. Saotome's voice reverberated down our squad comm, an incoherent roar of rage and anger. On my HUD, yellow targeting tags blanketed the swarm, and I watched on impassively as the air around his Messiah filled with smoke trails.

At that point, Saotome took to the comm, letting out a explosive shout. "Eat this!"

The missiles danced across the darkened interior of Island One, the sheer number of them briefly reminding me that Saotome had spent almost none of his payload in the earlier battle. As one, the swarm scattered slowly, utilising evasive manoeuvres to try and mitigate the damage as much as possible. The firefly points of missile thrust would not be denied however, the missiles mercilessly hunting down their targets to light the dark sky up with red-yellow flower-burst explosions.

I had no time to enjoy the fireworks though, and even as that was happening I was pouring odo into the frame of my Messiah. The quick Structural Grasp magecraft I began with indicated minor damage to some of the electromagnetic locks used for transformation, probably caused as I was struggling to regain control of my bird when I entered Island-One, but otherwise the only damage to my bird was superficial. Following that, I poured my essence of magecraft into the engine lines and control surfaces, the reinforcement allowing me to operate my Messiah beyond it's rated levels – which I then took advantage of by opening up the main thrusters and rocketing towards the stadium.

With that done I went back to the scopes to check the results of Saotome's handiwork.

I was impressed.

"Nice job Saotome," I said with a whistle of appreciation. Saotome's barrage had wiped out the smaller escort Vajra creatures to a man (bug, insectoid, whatever) and left three of the larger creatures as smoking husks of burnt-out carapace. The remaining three red Vajra pulled into formation again, continuing their vector out to the stadium, although they were definitely sporting a few impact injuries and one was definitely blackened enough that it could possibly have hidden in a poorly maintained fireplace. "Good initiative and positioning on that barrage."

It was good to see that even during the heat of battle Saotome was able to think on his feet and learn by tagging along with Ozma and myself. While it had been nearly all he could do to simply keep up with us, that move was almost a carbon copy of the missile strike Ozma used to clear us a path to the _Dulfim_ about forty minutes ago. The kid's timing and approach was incredible close to perfect as well, getting in the blind spot of the swarm (how on earth they left a blind spot is beyond me, but their slow reaction to the barrage meant it had to have been there) before unloading everything he had, turning a potential disaster inside the city into a vastly more manageable threat.

And as much as badgering the kid when he screws up is fun, it's very important to make sure he knows when he's doing something right too.

"Thanks," came Saotome's gruff reply, although I definitely detected a thread of pride in there. Baby steps.

The Vajra had a large lead on us, and even with my reinforcement I was going to be hard pressed to catch up. Saotome was decently ahead of me, but there was no way he had the munitions now to take on three of the red Vajra, having used all his missiles in the previous barrage, but he fell into fighter mode and began to chase hard anyway.

"That doesn't mean you can get cocky though," I admonished deadpan over the comm. Saotome's holo had the grace to look slightly put out.

"We can't let them hurt anyone!" he complained back to me, and I sighed. Good intentions, but his brain had lapsed back to it's usual tactical fugue.

"We won't," I told him, a touch of exasperation in my voice.

"But there's only three!" he shot right back, his voice rising in anger.

"Just set your velocity so we reach the stadium in formation – two against three gives us a lot more options than one against three," I told him, wondering if he'd accept the logic behind that or whether I'd just have to out and out order him into line.

"Roger," the blue haired kid said sullenly, and his thruster wake reducing slightly in intensity as he reduced power.

With that potential problem solved I turned my attention to Griffith Park Stadium. The configuration of the stadium had been changed to an open top arena, with a large fake cathedral erected on the stage, opening out to the wide seating area. I immediately fed odo into the lenses of my eyes, filling the imperfections of their existence with the stuff of pure magecraft, increasing the sharpness of the images my eyes were sending my brain. At the exits of the seating area the dregs of the crowd were attempting to make their way out of the emergency exits in an orderly fashion (and failing miserably – even as I was looking on I saw a teenage girl fall over backwards with blood spraying from a broken nose courtesy of a sharply thrown elbow), but of most interest to me (and my incredible disbelief) was the fact that Sheryl was still on stage, full costume with her microphone out, and apparently still belting out whatever she was singing now!

The pink haired songstress turned towards the incoming Vajra without any apparent surprise or fear, spreading her arms to continue in her choreographed dance for the song. That set some alarm bells ringing in my head - either she _was_ actually in league with them (which contradicted the previous reaction she'd had when we were trapped in that emergency escape tunnel), or she had nerves of steel. Or she was just dedicated to maintaining her professionalism. The last two options had all sorts of nasty implications for the state of her mental faculties - lack of self worth (incredibly unlikely based on our previous interactions, but I was definitely no psychologist), suicidal, or more likely she was just flat out stubborn and unwilling to stop the show for something as minor as an attempted kidnapping by hostile aliens (incredibly likely based on our previous interactions).

Still, it was clear she wasn't going to run, so I now had to factor a (possibly unwilling) civilian 'rescue' into our plan for taking down the remaining three Vajra. I continued to scan the building, hoping to find some way of using the terrain to our advantage - and the only way I could see of doing that was to drag the fight somewhere else. There were just too many people trying to escape to safely fight in the stadium.

It was then that in the darkened pit of the main seating that I spotted Ranka Lee. The younger Lee sibling was wearing the yellow sundress (although the limited lighting muted the tones so much it was pretty much grey from this distance) she was so fond of and was making no effort to join the rapidly vanishing mob of people at the emergency exits. Rather, she was holding something that looked suspiciously like a microphone up to her mouth, which was opening and closing in time with Sheryl's.

I swore violently then keyed the comm. Just my luck that neither Sheryl nor Ranka had the good sense to get out while the going was good. "Saotome, your girlfriends are in the stadium singing themselves up a storm," I told him, my frustration at the situation and the implications of it expressing itself through my tone of voice, which was slightly more vehement than I'd intended. Just for good measure, I tagged the two girls on my HUD and transferred the tags across the comm.

Saotome's holo quickly morphed from confusion to an interesting shade of red as he determined who I was talking about. "They're not my girlfriends!" he insisted testily, which in no way clarified for me whether he was embarrassed or angry, although if I had to guess I'd say it was a bit of both.

"There's no helping it now," I began, dismissing his denial and preparing to explain my earlier sudden surge of frustration. "If Ranka gets killed in there, Ozma will kill us. If Sheryl gets killed in there, the population of Frontier will kill us. We have to catch up to the Vajra before they reach the stadium." The comment about Sheryl was a rather convenient explanation to cover my true motives - any possible doubts I had about Sheryl having some connection to the Vajra were completely dispelled now, and figuring out if that connection was harmful or benign, or even better, figuring out how to abuse it to rid us of the Vajra threat suddenly seemed like the kind of thing to put at the top of my priority list. That was entirely reliant on Sheryl living through the next two minutes though - something that was entirely debatable at this point.

The comment about Ranka, on the other hand, well lets just say I didn't think it was _too_ far off the mark.

I squeezed the last ounce of power out of my engines to coax just a touch more extra speed out of my bird, which responded with a worrying shudder as the frame was pushed to it's limits. At this velocity even the slightest nudge on the ailerons could set up a horrible oscillation throughout my Messiah, so I was taking extra care to keep myself straight and level.

"So what's the plan then?" Saotome enquired.

"Don't let them get to the stadium," I replied grimly. The only problem with that idea was that I basically had only one option to do just that. There was no way I could reliably use my gunpod at this velocity, and there was no way we'd catch up if I cut power, so it looked like we were going in at full power - and hoping we'd make it in time.

"We're not going to make it," the blue haired kid warned me, frustration threading his voice. I double checked our relative velocity compared to the Vajra, and was forced to conclude the kid was right.

"Well lets hope they're not aiming for the girls," I muttered under my breath, as forlorn a hope as that seemed to me at the time.

The Vajra began to slow as they approached the stadium, a cue for me to raise my eyebrow in confusion. Surely the Vajra understood that it would be just as easy to use their weapons to level the stadium at high speed and that slowing down would allow us to reel them in. As they approached the perimeter the one of the Vajra (the soot blackened one) turned in the air to face us down, while the remaining two pulled up in front of the stage, their carapace masks staring down at Sheryl. The diva stared back, a look of pure defiance etched onto her features as she continued her song - a song I could feel beating across my circuits as I finally closed the gap between Saotome and myself.

"Saotome," I roared, "rescue Ranka!"

There was no time for him to argue – we were simply travelling too fast. Saotome immediately transformed into GERWALK mode and flung the legs of the half fighter/half mecha forwards, bleeding speed at a prodigious rate. I waited another split second longer before copying his manoeuvre, trusting that my reinforced ride would hold together long enough for me to come to a halt.

Without wasting a movement, both of us levelled our gunpods at the hapless soot blackened creature trying to hold us off. The injured Vajra tried to match us, bringing it's wrist mounted imitation cannon up, but it hadn't even completed the motion when twin streams of cannon fire ripped gaping holes in it's carapace and shredded the flesh beneath.

We rocketed past the falling corpse, the I.S.C. meter in my HUD rising at an alarming rate due to our rapid deceleration, and I realised then, as I looked past the insectoid speed bump we'd just rolled over, that I'd made a mistake. I had assumed as soon as I saw the pair of remaining Vajra over the stage that their target was Sheryl. That was actually the reason I'd sent Saotome after Ranka – I needed to know what Sheryl was doing to the Vajra, and for that I _definitely _her alive, which was something I wouldn't trust to anyone but myself at this point in time. Also, it meant Saotome wouldn't have to deal with the two creatures or get in my way.

In the time it had taken us to clear the path though, one of the Vajra had circled around to hover in front of _Ranka_, of all people! Ranka looked more than a little worried as the creature stretched an arm out towards her (hell, she looked downright petrified), but I couldn't waste any more concentration on that. Ahead of me, the remaining red creature had levelled it's wrist mounted imitation cannon at Sheryl, who was still trying to stare down the creature, although my reinforced eyes could pick the worried frown that betrayed her nervousness. It looked like I didn't have time to stop to deal with the Vajra anymore, so I brought the GERWALK's leg thrusters down to a neutral position.

By now I had closed to within thirty metres of the creature and had all but run out of time – I couldn't possibly bring the gunpod on target with the distance I had remaining to me, which left me with one option for dealing with the Vajra that was examining the pink haired diva with all the interest of a bratty kid staring at an anthill with a magnifying glass. I flooded odo throughout my body and the EX-gear suit I was wearing for good measure, while making final adjustments to my relative position, sending my VF-25 rolling to the left.

I was pretty sure the frame of my Messiah would paste that thing just as well as a barrage of micro missiles.

Even with the reinforcement and my heightened reflexes though, there was barely enough time to finish my preparations for ejection. I was halfway through the process when I risked a glance at my target - my eyes widened involuntarily as I realised I was now metres away from collision. The next moment three things occurred simultaneously; the Vajra's wrist mounted imitation cannon boomed; Sheryl's dress erupted in a flare of glowing compressed gasses; and I hurriedly pulled the ejection lever on my Messiah.

For the merest fraction of a second confusion assailed my brain as I tried to process exactly what had happened. Then I smashed head first through a cinderblock wall at Mach-one.

* * *

Dazed, I forced myself upright from where I'd been driven through a pile of debris - the collapsed remains of the fake cathedral that had been erected for the concert. I had tried to angle my ejection such that I would have been heading towards where Sheryl had been standing on the cathedral's roof, but my misjudged timing had instead launched me into a spire - one that was in the middle of a collapse courtesy of the spray of imitation cannon fire that had ripped through the cathedral a split second before I'd made my grand entrance. With a grunt I absent-mindedly forced my dislocated right shoulder back into place, which sent pain flaring up my right arm. Uncomprehendingly I stared at the arm I'd just shoved back into place, and the still functioning part of my mind (the area run mostly by my sarcasm) noted that despite my fine application of first aid that the arm was still broken in two other places. I shook my head to clear it and immediately regretted the motion - not only did my brain feel twice the size of my skull, but pain blossomed down my spine.

Belatedly I tried to force back the fog in my mind, collapsing back into a half crouch as I did so. With a start I realised I had already opened my circuits, pulling odo from one and using it to probe my body - even in my dazed state, it appeared that my decades of experience had taken over. The diagnosis wasn't favourable - I was heavily concussed (as if I couldn't tell that already), my spinal column was compressed pretty much all the way down and my left arm was bruised and had a deep cut along the length of the forearm. My right arm was thankfully only broken in those two places, and my internal injuries were limited to a little internal bleeding around my lungs and a bruised kidney. Everything else were fairly superficial scratches and bruises.

My conscious brain took a back seat as my instincts took over. It was an unusual feeling, almost as though watching someone else run my body. Now that my lower thought processes had decided my injuries weren't immediately life threatening, they moved onto confirming the objective. That was fortunately quick to resolve - a loud whine heralded the arrival of one Sheryl Nome from above, looking more than a bit worse for wear in a purple form fitting dress that was billowing on compressed gasses. Gas-jet cluster. Nice work by the diva, I noted clinically - clever use of that stage prop had prevented her becoming a greasy stain on the floor.

Through the clearing clouds of concrete dust I saw her face morph into a picture of concern. "..rou, ..re yo.. …right?"

I felt myself slam my left palm into my temple a few times, sending my brain bouncing off my skull a few times and pain shooting up and down my spine. Way to go, instinctual me. The gas-jet cluster cut out thirty centimetres above the ground, dropping Sheryl into an awkward fall that she graciously recovered from. Well, that might go some way to explaining how she managed to land safely after jumping into the emergency tunnel a week or so ago, I noted in a detached fashion.

"What?" I heard myself say, with all the emotion of a brick wall. Idly I wondered if this detached feeling was representative of what it would feel like when Alaya deployed me as a fully fledged counter-guardian.

That thought renewed my effort to throw the fog from my mind - I did _not_ want to know what it would be like to be Archer, nor did I even want to think about what it would be like!

"Are you alright?" Sheryl repeated as she closed in on me, the percussive maintenance I'd just performed on my eardrums apparently having the desired affect on my hearing. I looked the galactic fairy up and down as she approached - the purple dress was singed around the hem, probably having caught the very edges of my Messiah's thruster wash as she took off. Her eyes were wide with concern, and widened further when she spotted my broken arm.

"I've been better," I said with a forced grin, having regained control of some of my mental faculties. I certainly wasn't going to admit to her that I had been more afraid of what I would become if I let my consciousness shut down while my body was active than of the injuries I was bearing. "What happened to the Vajra?"

Some of the worry left the diva's face as she convinced herself that my businesslike tone indicated that I was better than I looked. "Over there," she said, pointing off to the right. I followed her finger and saw the mangled wreckage of my VF-25 half buried under the rubble near an emergency exit, and under that was the tell-tale red carapace of the Vajra I'd been aiming for, thankfully leaking purple ichor and not moving. There must have been some casualties there, but if I hadn't saved Sheryl, there'd be more than a handful of dead civilians further down the track - an acceptable loss. I slowly turned towards the seating section, ignoring the pain blossoming down my back as I did so.

I was not happy with what I saw.

Saotome was extricating his Messiah from a pile of rubble, while a petrified Ranka let rip with an ear splitting shriek as the Vajra that Saotome had completely failed to take out in the slightest grabbed her and took off. I watched on with a sense of bewilderment as the green haired girl was stowed away in some sort of sealed bubble pocket. The Vajra were after _Ranka_ as well?

"Saotome," I roared into my helmet comm, recovering quickly from the surprise. "If you don't get Ranka back I'm going to kill you! And that will be sweet, _sweet_ mercy compared to what the squad commander will do!"

Seriously, I gave the kid one job to do, and he'd been doing so well for the rest of the day, so why on earth did he have to screw it up now! Sure, I wasn't expecting him to _actually_ have to deal with one red Vajra creature, but it's not like he had a particularly poor track record at taking care of them.

I watched on for a few seconds as the blue haired kid unfolded his Messiah, then abruptly realised something.

"Saotome?" I queried, tapping my helmet. "Saotome?" I tried a final time, slightly louder.

Nothing.

I pulled the minimalistic straps of metal that composed the helmet of my EX-gear off my head and violently hurled it away in disgust, drops of blood scattered loose from the cut on my good (relatively speaking) arm splattering over the ground as I did so. The Alaya-damned helmet comm must have broken at some point during my high speed floor insertion through several cinderblock walls, leaving me out of the loop with everything going on in the battle now. Furiously I began gesticulating at the cockpit of Saotome's variable fighter with my good arm, and thankfully the kid appeared to get the gist of my message, as he swiftly took to his thrusters after the fleeing red Vajra.

"So what now?" asked the songstress standing beside me, regaining some of the haughtiness I was used to from her. I spared her a look - a more thorough assessment than my quick glance as she landed earlier. The dress she was wearing I now belatedly recognised as actually being a skinfitting holo suit - there was no way that combination of tall black heels and tight, full length purple dress could have possibly allowed her to land safely when she cut the gas-jet cluster. Not for the first time I was able to see what it was that gave her the legions of teenage boy fans she had - her body filled out the dress nicely (although that was partly because that was what holosuits were basically designed to do, you still needed to have the body to pull it off at the level Sheryl could), and even in the modest dress she was wearing and the current circumstances she was radiating a refined sort of sex appeal.

I shrugged. "I'm pretty much out of this fight now," I said simply. While I could technically carry on if required, I'd be on the receiving end of a fair few questions I wouldn't like to answer if I did so, especially if I made it somewhere where I'd actually be useful. The fight seemed to have moved on from here for now though, so it looked like I wouldn't have to flex my circuits for anything more than healing. I started walking towards the wreckage of my Messiah, suppressing the urge to limp. "I'm going to check my cockpit to see if the comm is somehow still working in there," I continued, slowly channelling odo into my healing process.

An itching sensation ran up and down my right arm as the broken bones slowly began to pull themselves back into position - a process that was rudely interrupted as the ground shook slowly. It was a steady wobble, but keeping balanced wasn't the problem - whatever was strong enough to shake several tonnes of concrete definitely was the problem.

A big, red problem that I thought was already dead, to be precise.

The Vajra buried under my wrecked Messiah pulled itself upright in a shower of debris, flooding the area with concrete dust. The accompanying shudder from that final effort lashed the earth with shockwaves, throwing Sheryl off her feet and sending me stumbling, although fortunately for us Vajra used too much force to bring itself upright, sending it staggering backwards and buying us precious seconds to regain our footing in the process.

"What was that about being out of this fight now?" Sheryl asked sarcastically as she pulled herself off the ground.

I felt considerably put out. _Considerably_. "It should be dead," I muttered petulantly. "I crashed a Messiah into it at just below Mach one."

By now I had regained my balance, but the effort was painful – being jolted around had ruined the tender beginnings of my healing process.

"Well it's not," Sheryl pointed out, completely unnecessarily. I glanced around, looking for cover and finding nothing that would seriously stand up to a swipe or two of the Vajra's claws. "You can do something about it, right?" The pink haired diva asked, a touch of nervousness entering her voice.

"Let's see," I mused, backing away slowly. "I have no variable fighter, no weapon, I'm injured and the opponent is a three storey tall pissed off giant bug. We might be out of luck." I wasn't entirely sure whether it was pissed off or not – the carapace was holed seriously in three places, the places that weren't holed were covered in spiderweb cracks, and it's left arm was a shattered mess of chitin and ichor. I couldn't read it's expression, but it's a fair call that it was pissed off.

"There's no way I can die here," the songstress informed me, her voice still containing that thread of nervousness. "I'm Sheryl Nome!"

I glanced at the woman in question, who was attempting to stare down the red creature the was now striding towards us. She'd done well to hold her nerve as long as she had, and she held her head high even though she'd clearly come to the conclusion that we were pretty much done for now.

I grinned ferally.

"Well said, Sheryl Nome," I told the young woman, pulling deeply from my circuits as I did so. "Start running, I'll distract it while you escape."

"No," she shot back imperiously, having regained control of her tone. "I won't leave you here to die while I escape as a coward."

"Who said anything about dying?" I asked her rhetorically. Before she could reply, I opened the door into my soul, allowing myself to dive into the wasteland of fire and ash that housed the very essence of what it was to be me.

Swords, thousands of swords, perfect replicas of every sword I had even laid eyes on in my life.

"You can't possibly think you're going to beat that thing," the diva gasped, apparently finally figuring out my intent.

The part of myself that I allowed to remain in the real world ignored that comment. "If you insist on staying, could you do me a favour and close your eyes? It would also help if you got behind some cover," I told her in a detached manner, waving my hand aimlessly behind me. By now I was deep within my soul, and staring straight at a weapon I knew would bring me victory.

The Vajra had taken two unsteady steps towards us by now, but I was retreating from my sanctum, carrying with me the image of a weapon that would bring me victory. I was ready for the counter attack. I poured odo into my body, bracing it for the manoeuvres that would carry me to the weak spot I had identified on my approaching enemy – the highest hole in the carapace was close to a bundle of nerves that I recalled controlled the motor functions of the red creatures.

I glanced at Sheryl, who had her eyes shut, but otherwise stood as though she was commanding a losing battle. Upright, regal, and expecting to die with good grace at any minute. I spared one more glance around the ruined stadium, searching for security cameras and witnesses - and finding none.

From the depths of my soul I brought with me an ancient weapon once wielded by the Norse hero Sigurd. The sword itself seemed rather unremarkable, a three foot Viking sword with an iron hilt and a leather bound grip that terminated in a semi-spherical pommel. Just on looks alone, I had several dozen that could have replaced it in my personal armoury, but none of those had the history that this sword had.

"Trace on," I murmured quietly as I began the Tracing process. Through the first steps of reproduction I could feel nothing but a simple steel sword forming in my hands, but as I began to sympathise with it's history and reproduce it in the blade itself I could feel a power of Noble Phantasm levels surging forth. A power that had once slain the great dragon Fafnir, a power that I now wished to borrow for use against my dragon-sized foe.

Gram, sword of Sigurd materialised in my left hand as I finished the process, faint blue flames infusing the air immediately around the blade. Without a word I activated the thrusters on my EX-gear, throwing myself towards the giant red creature bearing down on us. Clearly the Vajra wasn't expecting something as small as me to try a straight up charge on it, and awkwardly swung it's good claw at me. I adjusted my orientation by changing my centre of mass, easily dodging the strike and planting an armoured boot on the lower forearm of the Vajra. My body was screaming now, the effort required to maintain my balance with the momentum I was travelling with having ripped tendons and muscle far beyond breaking point. I shoved aside the pain, forcing odo into my leg muscles in order to hold them in position for the few extra seconds required to finish the job.

I leapt one more step along the Vajra's forearm, using the purchase on the upper forearm to launch myself towards the hole in it's carapace that I was aiming for, flooding Gram with prana as I did so. Gram itself was an anti-unit type Noble Phantasm, one specifically designed to deal with large, heavily protected creatures. It's release was dual stage; the first would force out a sharpened layer of prana to slice through whatever defences it was facing (hide, dragonscale, carapace, whatever); and as soon as the sword tasted flesh the second release would trigger, releasing the flames surrounding the blade to incinerate the flesh of the creature, burning it from the inside out.

The Vajra itself reared back as I closed in through it's guard. An unusual reaction, I noted in a detached manner. Surely such a creature would dismiss a human such as myself as not a threat - too small and squishy to care about, even injured as it was. Perhaps it recognised the power I was holding in my left hand and was reacting to that. Regardless, the reaction was meaningless - I merely corrected my angle with the thrusters on my EX-gear (sending fresh pain searing through my broken arm), bringing the sword around into the cracked carapace as I did so.

"Gram," I invoked crisply as the Phantasm met resistance, triggering the first stage of release. A wave of concentrated prana surged forth from the sword, cleanly slicing through the already weakened carapace. The resistance I felt through Gram disappeared, allowing the sword to continue on it's arc into the creature's flesh. I buried Gram deep into the nerve bundle I was aiming for, showering myself with purple ichor as I did so. The second release triggered at that moment, and I quickly pulled prana out of the sword, mindful that I needed to keep the injuries that _I _had dealt to the Vajra drone minimal to avoid questions, and also mindful of the fact that if the Vajra went up in flames, then it would be very likely that I would as well.

I quickly let the projection fade, and peered into the wound to determine the extent of the damage. The creature was very clearly dead this time, slowly toppling backward as gravity took over what it's earlier flinch had started. The wound that Gram had caused had barbecued a metre or so past where the blade had dug deepest, turning the nerve bundle I was aiming for into soot and causing severe burns on deeper flesh and organs. If I had the strength remaining I would have nodded in satisfaction - the wound would look as though a cannon round had fortuitously gone off close by when the creature had collapsed under my Messiah. As it was though, I augmented my remaining physical strength with odo, using my reinforcement to hold my torn muscles and tendons in place as I pushed myself off the toppling creature. A quick flare on my thrusters later and I was on the ground, where I finally allowed myself to feel the pain I'd been fighting through.

Sweet Alaya!

I'd barely let the first swear word fly when I heard Sheryl ask from somewhere behind me if I was alright. I ignored her in favour of unleashing a tirade of curses at the darkened sky, continuing on for a good minute or so before I got back to her.

"I'm alright," I replied testily, turning to face her and letting rip another curse at the world in general as pain flared fresh through my body. "You can open your eyes again now," I told her once I'd eventually finished my verbal barrage.

The songstress did so, her eyes widening as she took in the scene. I let my body reinforcement fail and immediately collapsed to the floor as my legs gave out underneath me. Rolling onto my side was painful but I managed it somehow, pulling odo from a circuit and redirecting it into my healing function. I could tell I had no immediately life threatening injuries, but the muscle and arm damage could take months to heal normally, so I wanted to get on with the process as quickly as I could. It helped that those injuries were mostly internal, with the exception of the arm - it would make bluffing through Sheryl's inevitable questions easier.

"Are you alright?" she asked again, wasting no time now that she could see my situation for herself. I was semi surprised to see her face change to concern again. I guess I was just used to the more forthright, self confident image that defined her personality every time I'd met her until now.

"I'm fine," I lied through gritted teeth. "Just a bit tired." It was a reasonable excuse to stay on the ground, and hopefully Sheryl wouldn't lower herself to bother to check that - I was sure any external stimulus would just set off more pain triggers in my body.

"If you say so," she said quickly. "How did you kill it?" The pink haired songstress continued just as quickly, her rising tone betraying some sort of expectation of my answer.

That was the million dollar question now, wasn't it. What was going to be the best way to answer this one?

I could feel my right arm beginning to tingle as the bones came back together. "I didn't," I answered slowly. "It keeled over as I reached it. Must have been in some sort of death spasm, like a last gasp attack or something."

Sheryl looked at me intently. "What about that fire I saw just before you fell? And the sword? Where'd you get that from?" She asked.

My eyes narrowed.

"You looked," I stated flatly, my tone low.

Sheryl had the grace to look embarrassed, but didn't back down. Great. Now I might be forced to kill my best lead on the Vajra in order to protect my secrets. "So what if I did? I could have been in danger standing where I was," she pointed out, but with the demeanour of a con-man whose fifth ace has just fallen out of his breast pocket.

"Firstly," I said, using a firm tone, "I did suggest you find cover first. Secondly, and I'm asking this politely as one professional to another; if _anyone_ asks about what happened here, please tell them you had your eyes shut the entire time." I needed to compromise - I needed Sheryl alive in order to chase down what was bringing the Vajra here, but at the same time I needed to maintain the secrecy of my magus skills and true employer. Despite my initial plan to just lop her head off there and then, I was fairly sure I had enough of a handle on Sheryl as a person to be able to satisfy both of my objectives.

Sheryl opened her mouth, presumably to question why she should tell people that, but I kept talking - straight over the top of her. "You are well within your rights to ignore my request," I told her reasonably. "But I have secrets to preserve, secrets which I may be willing to entrust you with later, provided I know you are trustworthy," I told her, with no intention of ever following through on that. There was no way in hell I'd let her know about magecraft and the counter-force. "Of course, if some of my secrets got out, I'd be forced to deal with the leak, and that's always unpleasant."

To be honest, the list of expressions that crossed Sheryl's face during that little speech was priceless. Wide-eyed disbelief morphed into petulant indignation as I interrupted her, which then became a willing-to-please smile as I hinted that I might eventually tell her my secrets, and finally she settled on red-faced shock as she figured out what I was implying would happen if she broke my trust.

"You know," I said, changing my tone entirely to something cheerfully conversational, "normally I'd just skip to the last part if people found out about my secrets."

"W-well, why are you giving me a choice?" The diva stuttered, having been completely shaken off her usual haughty and in control perch.

"Because I think I can trust you," I told the girl, suppressing a wince as my legs cramped up - a sure sign my muscles and tendons were pulling back into position. "I'd like to trust you, so I'm giving you a chance."

I honestly couldn't care if I could trust her or not, and neither did it matter - all I had to do was appeal to her sense of curiosity and honour and she wouldn't dream of telling anyone about 'the fire' and 'the sword' she saw today, and she'd do it voluntarily, no less. The net result would be that she wouldn't tell anyone, and she'd still have a head on her shoulders which would aid greatly in tracking down the cause of the Vajra attacks.

I'd get what I wanted - that's how it had to be in my line of work. Eventually it all came down to the bottom line.

"You didn't have to threaten me though," Sheryl tried to point out, straightening her shoulders and lifting herself upright to regain some of the usual Sheryl Nome imperialistic splendour.

My eyes narrowed. I didn't want her to get the idea that she had too much leeway with the line I was offering her. "That wasn't a threat. That was simply a statement of fact," I told her intently, dropping my tone yet again.

Sheryl narrowed her eyes straight back at me, clearly refusing to be browbeaten now that she'd regained her composure. We locked eyes for more than a moment, and during that time I was certain I spotted true steel in her eyes - the stubbornness, the inherent knowledge that no matter what she would always be correct, and the unshakeable belief in her own justice that all truly great people have - I _know_ I spotted them in her gaze just then, hidden deeply in a coolly feigned disinterest.

"I suppose I can do that for you," she informed me in an offhanded manner.

An odd thought struck me as Sheryl coolly asked if I was alright for the third time in as many minutes. That steel in her gaze - maybe I _could _genuinely trust Sheryl with my magical secrets. Maybe I could simply have told her exactly what I did in the fight and asked her to not talk about it and she wouldn't have - without me having to manipulate her into it.

Yet... The idea of trusting _anyone_ with the knowledge that I was a magi was such an alien concept to me that when Saotome (with Ranka safely ensconced in the cockpit with him, thank Alaya), Mikhail and Ozma landed next to the stadium five minutes later to extract us, I was still pondering it.

* * *

_Authors note:_

Well that was a long time between drinks. I had a list of things to blame, but I can't remember them now. Video games and holidays mostly. I'd quickly like to thank my brother who I badgered into proof reading for me, so hopefully there won't be as many little mistakes as you're used to seeing!

Thanks heaps for the reviews guys! I was picked up on my poor application of physics in the previous chapter for several things. I was very definitely wrong on the 'top speed in space' thing. I know at the velocities we're talking about the acceleration will just pile on and pile on if the thruster are still going, but at 2am in the morning I was reading a VF-25 fact sheet on the net and it listed top speed. My immediate thought was that's bullshit, how can it have a top speed in space, but I threw it in anyway, figuring it was canon. After being accused of screwing it up, I went back to that page, this time not half falling asleep and saw the not-so-small print in front of it – at 10km height in an atmosphere. So, my bad. The other parts were victim of my poor writing – when I put finger to keyboard I thought the frames of reference were fairly straight forwards, but after re-reading the trouble parts, I can see that there might have been a few issues with it.

The other thing was how scarily well some of you can figure out parts the story before I've even gotten around to writing them!

As for this chapter, action, action and more action. Shirou gets a bit complacent, and it costs him. But in his defence he was pretty out of it, having been launched through a couple of walls. Only time will tell if Sheryl will let slip to someone who can figure out what Shirou was doing or not, I guess. He also pays for assuming that Sheryl was the sole cause of the Vajra attacking Frontier, by almost having Ranka lost to the Vajra. I wonder what he'll make of that.

Take it easy guys, and thanks for reading!


	11. Bedside Manner

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

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Chapter 11: Bedside Manner

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"Well, Kanaria told me I'd be good for discharge tomorrow," I told my audience, which consisted of the three meltrans of Pixie squadron. The leader, Klan, was sitting on one side of the bed, half paying attention to me and half staring out the window. The pink-haired Nene was sitting on the other side of the bed, industriously peeling an apple despite earlier protests from yours truly about the need to actually feed me. The final member of the squad was leaning against the wall next to the door to my hospital room, wearing a smirk.

"Well that's good news," Ramaria replied in her usual rocky tone.

"Yeah," Nene nodded in agreement. "You're lucky to recover so quickly Shirou!" She admonished me gently, and I put on a bemused face – a month or so ago there would have been no way I would have heard that much coming out her mouth without her going red from embarrassment.

The pink haired meltran put a plate of peeled apple pieces on the stand next to my bed with a clatter. I never understood the custom that made young girls feel the need to peel apples on hospital bedsides and always found it pointless, but at the same time there was no point in letting good food go to waste, so I took a slice and bit into it before answering _that _loaded question.

"Eh, I just got lucky when I ejected. Lord knows I could have just as painted my brains across the stage," I replied. Technically true, but there was no chance of me actually braining myself on the stage under reinforcement. Truth be told, I was also healing slower than I would have liked, but for the sake of appearances I had slowed my accelerated healing process after I had restored my major injuries – a trick I had learned long ago to keep unwanted questions from being asked.

"Well as long as your luck holds out, I suppose that's fine," Ramaria said, a furrow of concentration on her face turning into a more welcoming smile as she spoke. I briefly toyed with the idea that Ramaria had perhaps found my lie regarding my 'good luck' a little weak, given her frown, but she seemed to buy it. Maybe I needed to keep more of an eye on her than I thought.

"I suppose," I shrugged. It's not like I needed to rely on luck in those kinds of situations anyway.

By now, Klan had given her complete attention to the window, so I shuffled up a bit further against the bed head in order to follow her line of sight. In the hospital garden the rest of my squadron were picking their way down the main path in a two-one-one configuration. Saotome and Mikhail were at the front, apparently arguing about something or another, followed by Luca who was looking somewhat disappointed at the situation. In the rear was Ozma, who was carrying an attache case and trying not to laugh.

"Looks like company is on the way, huh?" I said, nudging Klan in the ribs with an elbow as I did so. In a way I was glad she had her concentration elsewhere - out of all the people in the room, she was usually the most attentive and as such more likely to try and dig a little deeper into my cover up of my magical healing powers. If she had have picked up on what I was saying in the same way as Ramaria possibly had, I'd probably be hip deep in awkward questions right now.

She jerked a little at that, as though I'd woken her up from a daydream. She looked around guiltily, eliciting a chuckle from Ramaria and myself.

"Seems to be," Klan replied rather lamely, trying to cover her out-of-character zone out, and failing miserably. She turned back to the window, where the members of Skull squadron had closed some more of the distance to the hospital door, enough to be out of my line of sight at least.

"You may as well open that window before you fog it up," I informed the short, macronised meltran commander. She was in no danger of doing that, but I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to poke fun at the Pixie commander – Alaya knows she'd had more than her fair share of shots at me. By now even Nene had gotten over the shock of seeing her onee-sama caught flat-footed (and to be fair, that hardly ever happened) and gave a small chuckle as Klan reached for the latch.

She slid the window open with a heave, and cool air billowed into the room, disturbing the tied up curtains framing the window. It was a pleasant break from the sterile recycled air being pumped into my room by the hospital's air conditioning system, and the banter was put on hold for a second or two as we enjoyed the breeze.

"That feels nice," Nene said wistfully, breaking the silence. I found myself nodding in agreement, before the room lapsed into a comfortable silence again. I found it slightly unusual that I was able to enjoy these moments more with the present company than with my own squad, but rationalised it as a result of seeming to accidentally run into them far more often than the Skull Squadron, probably because the majority of them spent a fair chunk of the day at school.

It had been three days since the giant clusterfuck that the military historians were already dubbing the 'Defense of the _Dulfim_' and the 'second battle of Island-One' - and all three of those days I had spent in the Starlight Hill hospital. Being cooped up in the hospital chafed at me a bit - all I really wanted to do was get out and help with the cleanup, and maybe dabble in chasing down some of the newest leads I picked up regarding the Vajra. Instead I was pointlessly stuck in a bed, trying not to raise anyone's suspicions, and waiting for the debriefing that Ozma was bringing with him to this room. That's why there was currently a gathering of pilots up here at the moment - seeing as I ostensibly couldn't be moved, and we couldn't hold a full debriefing without me, Ozma finally got tired of waiting for my release and decided to have the debriefing up here.

Not that my time in recovery was a waste, far from it. I had plenty of free time, and that allowed me to think through several of the, well… issues, I suppose, that had either frustrated me or I had simply set aside for dealing with later. Most of which had to do with the last battle, unfortunately.

The first thing I'd tried to figure out was what was causing my circuits to beat the crazy way they did, and why they went completely haywire why we were folding. It took a fair bit of time to correlate my memories of those events to the incidental actions that were happening (and to be fair, I was fairly heavily concussed for a day or so, which made thinking _hurt_). Eventually I remembered some earlier instances where the same thing was happening, which allowed me to come to a rough hypothesis: there was some method of Vajra communication that resonated off my circuits, which basically implied magecraft.

I reached that conclusion by noticing that every time I got close to a Vajra creature that clearly had some tactical data to share, my circuits went funny. Likewise, whenever their faux missiles closed in on me, the communication packages of those could easily have been the cause of the resonances in my circuits that helped me time my evasive manoeuvrings. This lead somewhat nicely into why I couldn't pull odo from my circuits while Saotome and myself were playing stowaway on the Vajra battleship - when we were being forcibly folded, the strength of the communication resonance was so strong, it completely disabled my ability to access my circuits.

There were a few holes with that theory - namely, why Sheryl's song would resonate through my circuits when I was close to Saotome's VF-25. I hadn't been able to rationalise that with my idea until this morning, when I'd gotten my hands on some live recordings of Sheryl's concert that day. By (rather poorly) matching the timestamps on the video with what my shaky memory was telling me of the time on my mission clock, Sheryl was on stage blasting out the corresponding song that was resonating off my circuits when I was close in to Saotome's VF-25. From there it wasn't hard to figure out how her songs were reverberating my circuits. Sheryl was rather conspicuously wearing the mate of the earring she'd loaned to Saotome, who himself had been wearing it the entire battle. Considering I knew those earrings contained stored prana, and I now knew that the Vajra used magecraft to communicate somehow, it wasn't a large stretch of the imagination to conclude that the earrings somehow tapped into the Vajra communication network, which in turn gave a plausible reason why the Vajra would be interested in the galactic fairy. This theory was also supported by the strange resonances I was getting in my circuits as we folded to the battle – Saotome and the earring were parked next to me on the flight deck, and combined with what happened to me when we were in the heart of the Vajra ship... The pieces kind of fit together nicely, and I wasn't going to spend too long trying to figure out alternatives.

It was times like these that I wished a better grasp on magecraft in general, rather than focusing on my specialties. A lot of what I had come up with was conjecture that, while admittedly fitting the facts, I had no idea how to actually _prove_. Even someone to bounce the idea off would have been nice, but magecraft was pretty much a dead art now, what with the Mage's Association being long dead and me not having been able to track down any surviving magi.

Still, it would just have to do until I ran into something that contradicted my observations. One of the other things I'd been (more than slightly) worried about was Sheryl herself. She'd seen me materialise Gram, sword of Sigurd in order to deal with the half-dead Vajra that challenged us at the end of the fight. Even though she didn't recognise what I was doing, I needed to make sure then and there that she'd keep quiet about what she saw. I thought I'd done a good job manipulating her, but there was always the possibility she'd blab, and that information could get me identified – and killed. Fortunately the lack of assassins in my hospital room seemed to indicate she'd kept her mouth shut so far – although I'd have to keep an eye on the songstress to make sure she stayed in line. One of the other things that pissed me off about being in hospital was not being able to keep an eye on the tracker I'd planted in Sheryl's handbag back during the Miss Macross pageant, and was going to be one of the first things I'd check out once, I was, well, checked out of here.

Another issue was something I'd hoped to raise in the debriefing coming up. Right at the start of the battle, Luca had mentioned something about deploying an experimental fold communication system that couldn't be jammed by the Vajra. Seeing as none of our communication channels had been jammed by the Vajra in earlier battles, I was not really seeing the point in deploying experimental technology. I also doubted that L.A.I. would be deploying it if it wasn't necessary, so I was hoping that Luca would be able to shed some light on why they thought it needed to be deployed. I didn't like the idea of one of my squadmates holding out on me.

My train of thought was interrupted as the door creaked open, and I let out a chuckle as Ramaria guiltily jerked back from the nurse call button near the door, her finger hanging damningly out. Fortunately for her though, there were no grumpy hospital staff coming through the door, but instead the rest of Skull Squadron, Ozma having barged straight through without having bothered to knock.

"How're you feeling Shirou?" I was asked by my grey haired squad commander, with his usual cavalier disregard for general courtesies.

"Not bad skipper," I replied, entirely truthfully. "I heard you got sick of the doctors telling _me_ that I was too sick to make it to a debriefing though."

Ozma chuckled, matching my grin. "Heh, yeah. If you think you're okay to be up and about, who are they to argue?"

It was a fair argument in my case - I knew my body far better than most people could ever claim to. Ozma on the other hand - I bet he'd push himself without a second thought when he really shouldn't be.

As the Squad Commander busied himself with setting up a portable terminal on the table, the rest of my squadron filed in, thankfully having sorted out whatever issue they were arguing about down in the courtyard. I got a few throwaway greetings from the rest of my squad as they spread out around the hospital room. Mikhail gave the Pixies a friendly wave as well, which prompted slightly awkward waves from the other Saotome and Luca.

Ozma gave the terminal he'd set up on my bedside table a thump and a holo burst into life at the foot of my bed, showing a tactical display of our fleet before we initially engaged the Vajra attacking the _Dulfim_ and the _Kaitos._ I felt a weird sense of dislocation as I gazed over the tactical holo - for someone who had been in the thick of things, winding the chaos of bullets, variable fighters and Vajra down into a series of blue and red tactical markers made it seem somewhat impersonal. Ozma coughed uncomfortably, then launched into a rather dry, and considerably un-Ozma-like analysis of the battle.

"So, well, at 1450 hours, our point squadrons engaged the Vajra vanguard."

As Ozma began, a handful of blue triangles began to punch into the mass of red surrounding the tag of the _Dulfim_, and I idly noted that those blue triangles were labeled as Skull and Pixie, with a handful of supporting blue signatures behind us. I cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

"Hold up, hold up," I complained, playing my grumpy injured vet card. "Before all this there was some form of counter-jamming measure deployed that I hadn't heard of before. What was that about?"

The squad commander looked a bit awkward for a moment, and I could see him open his mouth to chew me out for interrupting. Thankfully he changed his mind and instead flipped through a clipboard he was carrying. "Some kind of new L.A.I. tech," he mumbled after a bit, having found the appropriate details. Ozma then gestured to Luca with the clipboard, and the overly curious kid opened his mouth.

"Vajra have the capability to disrupt and block standard fold communications, as we discovered during our first skirmish with them over the fleet," our L.A.I. liasion stated, matter-of-factly. It was unusual to hear Luca talking seriously - he was usually much more curious and submissive in general conversation. "L.A.I. had been trialling a new type of fold communication based on sub-fold-space entanglement, so we rushed up field trials. Fortunately it was ready for deployment for the sortie."

I narrowed my eyes. Something sounded a little bit suspect here - namely why L.A.I. was conveniently near field trial stage when the Vajra first attacked the fleet on what was technically a redundant system. I mean, sure, it wasn't impossible that it was just a coincidence - Alaya knows that scientists often work on what catches their fancy, rather than on anything immediately useful, but it did seem just a little _too_ convenient. Worth pressing for a bit of information, in any case.

"Well, can I get a copy of the specs then?" I asked politely, having taken a quick second to rearrange my facial features - just long enough to let him know that I thought something sounded fishy.

Luca's eyes dropped away from mine for a second. "They're currently on a need-to-know basis. Sorry," he replied.

"Good thing you're sorry," I replied, my tone as scathing as I could manage to get it. Something was definitely up if I couldn't get the specs as a participant (albeit unwilling) in the trial. "I wasn't aware having untested technology thrust upon me with no warning, on a vital system, _in a combat situation_, put me on the not-need-to-know list."

I was currently staring Luca down, but out of the corner of my eye I spotted the rest of the pilots around me not wanting to step into this little confrontation I'd forced. Mikhail, Saotome and Ramaria looked indifferent - they obviously couldn't care less seeing as the whole system seemed to have worked. Nene looked worried, and had grabbed a handful of Klan's SMS jacket - I had a feeling if I stopped to pay more attention to the pink haired Pixie, she'd be almost comically trying to hide behind the much shorter Klan. Klan and Ozma were looking thoughtful, no doubt being more aware of the implications of Luca hiding information from us.

Luca tried to stare me down in return, but I'd been eyeballed by experts in my six or so decades in this galaxy, and poor Luca was definitely not in their league. He folded quickly under my baleful gaze.

"I'll try and get you a copy of the specs," he mumbled in defeat, breaking eye contact with me.

"I wouldn't mind one too," Ozma said, while wearing the kind of smile that you would not want to run into in a dark alley.

"Me too," piped up Klan.

"I'll try my best to get copies for everyone, I'm a liaison, not a policy officer," Luca offered, looking considerably put out. Well sucks to be him - if he wanted to keep secrets he should have done a better job of lying to my face.

"Moving on," continued Ozma, clearly having decided that that admission was as far as we were going to get on the topic of anti-jamming measures. He waved his hands over the terminal and the holo of red and blue triangles began their dance above my bed again. I watched, paying half attention as the battle unfolded again in as a series of tac-markers, and I kind of zoned out of Ozma's awkward description of events in favour of making my own tactical analysis. As far as I could tell, there wasn't really a wrong move made, up until we unexpectedly lost the _Kaitos_. The tac-marker of Luca's unit was cruising dead in space, having been disabled by the defold of the Vajra mothership, which broke the strength of our defensive line and allowed the capture of Skull-Three by a swarm of red triangles. At which point my personal tac-marker broke formation and tore towards the newly arrived mothership, eroding the position of our defending squadrons even more.

"Not your best move Shirou," Ozma commented with a touch of recrimination. He was right of course - what I really should have done was supported our defensive actions until the rest of the SMS boys and girls could regroup. By chasing vengeance on the Vajra without thinking, I could have potentially thrown away the lives of the rest of my squadron. And I thought myself to have been beyond being driven by my emotions - fifty years serving Alaya had drilled into me the importance of my job, of prioritizing the survival of as many human lives as possible. Hell, the last time I had thrown reason into the wind and fought on pure emotion was at the end of the Zentraedi clean-up operations on earth, nearly forty five years ago.

In short - that action was not like me _at all_, and the fact I had undertaken it worried me greatly.

"Sorry," I said simply while offering no excuse, hiding my distracting thoughts in my crisp response. Ozma took the apology at face value, as I'd expected he would, and carried on.

"At least you were easy to reel in," he said with a crooked grin. "You, on the other hand," he began, directing a _very_ pointed look in Saotome's direction, "Should _not _have done what you did, under any circumstance, ever."

In the holo-field, Saotome's tac-marker broke away from the squadron as I moved to rejoin it, heading towards the Vajra mothership. This in turn prompted another vector change from my holographic representation, as it moved back out into the fray to support Skull-Five.

I had expected Saotome defend his action with all the flair and finesse I was used to seeing from him when he was under criticism (that is to say, start shouting angrily with no thought for reasonable discourse), but instead the kid put on a sullen expression as we all glanced at him.

"Sorry," he grumbled. Clearly he'd already been chewed out for this more than once over the past few days, judging by that reaction. Ozma accepted the blue haired kid's apology with the same aplomb he accepted mine with, and carried on.

"Having said that, in the long run it turns out that wasn't necessarily a bad decision, but I'll get to that in a minute," our Squad Commander continued, as the battle continued above my bed. I watched in fascination as the markers tagged Skull-Five and -Four pierced the (rather thick) Vajra defensive lines and entered the mothership - I didn't quite remember there being _that_ many Vajra to go through.

I glanced at Saotome, who didn't seem that interested in the sudden praise. On the other hand, I noticed Mikhail's eyes widen slightly, so I guessed this was the first time Ozma had voiced that opinion.

I have to hand it Saotome – he's a consummate actor. If he was surprised or happy about hearing that bit of praise, he certainly wasn't showing it at all. There was nothing in his eyes, nothing in his face, and nothing in his stance that indicated he wasn't anything but sullen from his earlier reprobation. Scary stuff, in hindsight. He _could_ lie right to my face and I probably wouldn't be able to tell.

Once Saotome and I were in the Vajra ship, we were at a part of the battle that I hadn't personally participated in, which piqued my interest. I tuned out Ozma's commentary again as I examined the motion of markers around the holo. The battle appeared stalemated along our defensive lines as the Dulfim pulled out of combat space with survivors – although our fighters were reaping a greater tally of kills than their Vajra counterparts, the Vajra had more units in reserve to throw at us. That changed suddenly when six cruisers from the 1st Defense Fleet folded in, causing the mothership to beat a hasty retreat, taking most of it's defensive complement with it. I watched with a satisfied grin as blue tac-markers swarmed from the fleet ships, and pushed out towards the flanks, eliminating their immediate opposition. From that point onwards it was really one-way traffic - the severely depleted Vajra forces collapsed as NUNS forces began folding around the Vajra line, quickly eliminating the remaining bugs in the battlespace.

"As yet, we are unaware of the Vajra motivation for folding a mothership into the battle," Ozma said with a shrug. "Even if the NUNS 1st Fleet hadn't folded in, it was still going to be touch and go for the Vajra with the battleship there. If they weren't going to commit entirely, why bother sending a token force? If they were on an intel gathering mission, why fold out to an even more lopsided battle with the convoy fleet?" Our Squad Commander was posing questions that didn't really have answers to, at least not until we understood the Vajra mindset and physiology better.

"Maybe they thought that committing a mothership would be sufficient to overcome us, and withdrew it when it became clear it wasn't," Ramaria suggested from over near the door, her angular features looking much more defined than they usually did when she was horsing about. I knew the meltran had a reasonably sharp mind - you needed one in order to be an above average pilot - but it was unusual for her to put forward an opinion on anything that didn't involve booze or dirty jokes.

"Another possibility we've considered," Ozma conceded, giving the red haired Meltran a quick nod. I abruptly realised our fearless leader hadn't actually specified who the 'we' were, but didn't have time to continue that train of thought as Klan picked up where Ozma left off.

"In the end, it comes down to the fact that we are still unsure as to what their overall objective was from this entire chain of events, and whether or not they achieved it," The miniaturized Pixie leader told her subordinate, who took the apparent dismissal of her theory in her stride. Ozma picked up his a clipboard and glanced at it for a second, his eyes skimming the contents as he worked out which direction to take the debriefing in next. He looked up, satisfied, and swept his hand over the holo.

"Before we get to the battle at the convoy," Ozma said, as the SMS tac-markers gathered up on the Quarter and folded out, "we'll quickly go over what happened to Shirou and Alto in the mothership." At which point the holo winked out of existence.

"Now, touching on an earlier topic - this is part of the reason why busting in to rescue Luca wasn't a bad idea in hindsight. The objective was obtained, while our defensive lines outside held, and we got some very useful information about the layout of what appears to be a common enemy ship type, their defensive habits, and their analogues for some mechanisms we take for granted, like confinement of specimens," Ozma told us, with a touch of distaste showing on his face as he finished up.

The vacant space above the foot of my bed blurred and flickered as a holo materialised. The setting was distinctly alien and very claustrophobic. Biological conduits passed at random between walls made of chitin - in short, it was very definitely a video of the inside of the Vajra mothership. It must have been taken from Saotome's flight recorder, as mine had been irreparably crushed later in the fight. Sure enough, a second later a VF-25 tagged as mine strode into the shot, gunpod forward to cover the exits of the corridor, validating my deduction. On the left of the screen, a violent hole opened out into the dark void of space, indicating this visual data was collected from when we'd first breached the ship.

I suddenly realised it was a lot more crowded around my bed as the assembled pilots craned their heads to get a better view of the holo, which was playing in real time. We basically were viewing a first person image of what Saotome was seeing at the time, right up to the audio. A fascinated silence reigned in the room as I saw what Saotome had to deal with on point during advance through the Vajra ship, which apart from our discovery of the dead Vajra that we discovered (the one's most likely killed by my new friend in his red fighter) was not much, culminating in the brief firefight we had with Luca's pair of guards.

"Nice work on the entrance," Ramaria commented with a snide grin on her face. "Way to kick down the door."

"It gets better," I assured her, watching on as I gave orders to Saotome and advanced into the room. Again, I was feeling that odd sense of dislocation from the reality of the situation - of watching yourself when you know something bad is going to happen. Sure enough a lance of red split Saotome's view, followed quickly by an explosion, as my new friend in his red VF got the jump on me.

I hadn't realised quite how bad that looked from Saotome's point of view. Because Skull-Five was right behind me, the profile looked as though I'd been shot straight through the cockpit, which then exploded - when in actual fact it was my gunpod that took the damage. There was an audible intake of air from the everyone bar Ozma, Klan and myself as my VF began to tumble backwards in the holo. A quick tumble and some deft touches on the thruster later, it was clear that my handling of the situation had impressed the people who hadn't seen this holo before. I saw two Pixies and a pair of Skulls mouths drop open, and I suppressed a satisfied grin.

It was at that point that Saotome's view moved off the fight and towards Luca, the me in the holo having ordered him to secure Luca's RVF-25. There was some fumbling and a bit of background noise (grunts, mostly) over the comm, but Saotome quickly got the green RVF-25 slaved to his unit and turned around to see my fighter carefully backing away from the chamber entrance. A bit of banter later and we were folding out.

Ozma waved his hand through the holo and it disappeared again.

"Let me get this straight," Mikhail began slowly. "You had no gunpod, no missiles, no close combat weapon, and yet you managed to drive off that red VF?"

I shrugged. "Just because it's a new VF that I don't recognise, doesn't mean the pilot is any good," I pointed out with a wry grin. I was lying through my teeth, of course – the pilot knew exactly the right move for every situation he got himself into down there, he just had the poor luck of running into someone who could read the fight even further than that. The fact the Saotome had missed the action made the lie even more believable, although I did notice Ozma shoot me a funny look.

"Skills of unknown pilots aside," Klan began, taking a cue from Ozma who was still giving me an appraising look, "this variable fighter didn't match anything we've got on file. It's a long shot, but has anyone seen anything like this before?"

Every head in the room swiveled around to look at Luca, who raised his arms up in the air hopelessly.

"Just because I happen to work for a reasonably secretive technology firm, doesn't mean we've got a finger in every pie," we were told rather shortly by the curly haired boy, perhaps a bit annoyed at his treatment earlier, "but I'll ask around anyway. I can see some superficial similarities to the YF-24 prototype frame that we developed the Messiah from, so maybe it's a prototype from another colonisation fleet."

While it was common knowledge that the Messiah had been developed from the YF-24 prototype data, I'd never actually seen the bird in action, mostly because there were only three ever made and they were all part of a testing program I'd never been involved in. The rumour mill claimed several reasons why the project had been shelved - competition from unmanned drones and inferior performance compared to the YF-19 and VF-21 prototypes coming out of Project Supernova were the main ones. In fact, there were only two features of the YF-24 that betrayed it's status as the ancestor of our VF-25's - the first ever I.S.C. unit (an oversized and underpowered device, by all accounts), and the electromagnetic transformation system (which suffered from a few rather fatal kinks, apparently). As the prototype never made it into production, I never bothered to chase up the specs and blueprints either. All of which went a long way to explaining why I didn't make the same connection Luca did just then.

"Thanks Luca," our graying Squadron Commander said appreciatively, before flipping through his clipboard again as the rest of us waited with varying degrees of patience. Ozma quickly regained what little poise he had, his face lighting up as he found his place in his notes.

"Moving on," he began, tapping on the terminal's keyboard, "we get to the second part of the battle."

His fingers snapped off the keyboard and yet another tac-holo burst into view. The most dominant features of this layout were the thirteen convoy ships strung out along a great line in space, giving a clear indication that this was the battle fought in and around Frontier itself. Given the lack of red triangles and the standard patrolling formation of the NUNS forces, I guessed this was before the battle had begun. There was a brief flurry of activity as patrol fleets were pulled back into defensive formation, presumably as word of the impending Vajra attack was reported to the admirals. Sure enough, within five seconds a quadruplet of Vajra battleships folded onto the battlefield lined themselves up with Island-One. Just as the closest NUNS fighters began to divert and intercept, a fifth battleship folded in - the one Saotome and myself had hitched a lift on.

"The _Damocles_ was the first to go down, here," Ozma said, indicating a blue tac maker in the lead of a small flotilla that was pulling between the Vajra battleships and Island-One. "But before that, here come the heroes of the day," the Squad Commander continued, and suddenly the tags of Skull-Three, -Four and -Five appeared from the last battleship to fold in, pulling away from the line as fire as the tag denoting the _Damocles_ went down, followed closely by a handful of smaller escort ships of the 3rd Fleet. An unresolvable mess of red tags began to swarm from the Vajra ships as they released their smaller red and white bugs to attack Island-One.

"Holy shit," whistled Ramaria through her teeth. "They really wanted to catch you guys, didn't they?"

I raised an eyebrow questioningly and looked at the tac holo again - and sure enough, it looked as though the Vajra swarm were chasing our tac markers, but that was simply due to our overlapping vectors.

"I'm not so sure," Nene said thoughtfully, just as I'd opened my mouth to contradict the red-haired meltran. Nene continued on in her soft voice. "They're also on an intercept course for Island-One."

"That's exactly right," piped up Klan from the window, "and that's what we think their objective was in this case, considering the effort they went to to breach Island-One's hull."

A point which was emphasized as lines connected two of the Vajra ships with Island-One, which was now disengaging from Battle Frontier. At the same time the other three Vajra ships obliterated the remaining ships of the 3rd Fleet's flotilla.

"It looks like here's where the counter-attack really begins," noted Mikhail clinically.

"Sure was," agreed Ozma, gesturing to blue tac markers that were beginning to close around the Vajra assault like the pincers on a crab. A number of the closest NUNS cruisers fired a salvo at the Vajra battleships, disabling one even as VF-171 squadrons closed in from the flanks of the Vajra assault. "Not like they seemed to care though," the older man continued as the tac display outlined two more concentrated beam attacks on Island-One's hull. "Whatever they wanted into Island-One, they wanted it bad enough to throw away a small fleet on our defenses."

The rest of the room listened in fascination as a recording of my hurried conversation with Saotome regarding our plan of busting into Island-One through the Vajra made hole was played shortly before our two tac markers disappeared into Island-One. Our two blue triangles were followed closely by a good thirty or so red tags - there was no differentiation between the larger red Vajra types and the smaller white ones on the tac display.

"And here we get to the fun part," our graying Squad Commander told the assembled pilots with a grin. "The NUNS forces complete their pincer defense pretty much on the hull of Island-One, then it pretty much becomes a turkey shoot against all fighter-weight Vajra units in the area." Sure enough, a thin line of blue markers (VF-171's from the information tags) swept between the Vajra swarm and Island-One, forming a part of a much larger semi-circular formation surrounding the main swarm. At that point NUNS reinforcements began arriving in serious numbers from other areas in convoy space, really dropping the hammer on the trapped swarm, which quickly found it's numbers being mercilessly whittled down.

"You can see here that Admiral Perry brings in the 2nd Fleet's frigates and cruisers up from further down the convoy to keep the Vajra battleships occupied until Battle Frontier comes to bear," Ozma pointed out, completely unnecessarily, as anyone with half a brain and two working eyes could hardly fail to notice the heavy tonnage ships coming into position.

"And now," Ozma said with relish, "the fireworks." The Vajra battleships turned to attack the new threat, but they had underestimated the effective range of Battle Frontier, which disabled two of the large bulbous ships with a sweeping shot from it's Macross Cannon. Two yellow lines connected the remaining two Vajra battleship markers with a pair of frigates in the 2nd Fleet (said frigates apparently got off lucky - tac data listed them as disabled in small writing next to their tac markers), before return fire from the Spacey forces obliterated another bulbous, cream-coloured battleship. The Vajra vessel began to flee, but in a ridiculous turn of incredible luck, the Quarter and the Spacey's 1st Fleet defolded pretty much dead set in the middle of the retreat vector of the large Vajra battleship, cutting off it's escape.

Klan laughed _hard_. "I remember that," she crowed. "Do we have the bridge audio for this?"

"Sure do," said Ozma with a grin that spread to all the pilots bar Saotome and myself. Saotome's eyebrows raised in confusion, and action that I mirrored with my face.

"What happened?" I asked for the pair of us.

"Oh, it's coming. Keep in mind this was broadcast across the whole ship because Cath-Lieutenant Glass forgot to stop transmitting the all clear after the defold," we were told with a chuckle.

"Defold comple-" a voice that I identified as Catherine Glass came through the speakers, a touch tinny due to the recording. She never finished that sentence, opting instead to move on to a far more emotional outburst, a literal scream down the mic. "Holy shit!"

"Enemy target identified. Also; holy shit." came Ram's voice over the same channel, completely deadpan.

"It's all yours Bobby, and consider that shit holy." said Captain Wilder, all business.

"OOOOUUUURRYAAAA!" The man in question roared in reply, nearly breaking my eardrums in the process. Given that Catherine had screamed her lungs out right into a microphone, and that was bearable, Bobby must have been _really_ fired up at the thought of some action. The other giveaway was the fact that he wasn't making fun of Catherine Glass like the rest of the bridge had - her reaction was something I was sure would hang around with her for a while. Military tended not to forget the embarrassing things, and SMS seemed to be no exception, as far as I could tell from my dealings with a certain pair of Pixies at any rate.

On the tac holo, the Quarter began to pick up pace and corkscrew towards the Vajra ship, handily dodging a yellow line of doom from the red tac marker. In return, a green beam linked the Quarter to the lonely Vajra battleship, removing it's tac marker from the display.

From my bed I raised an eyebrow and grinned cheekily. "Nice to see that when things go according to plan it's not all that bad," I said, prompting a chuckle from the rest of the crew.

"Do we know what their goal was?" Asked Nene softly, when the laughter had died away. "The Vajra must had hoped to achieve something from this attack given that they didn't try to run when it became obvious they were outnumbered and outgunned."

It was a good point, and I vaguely remembered also having the same thought in the middle of trying to secure my entrance into Island-One. Earlier I would have guessed it had something to do with Sheryl, or at least her earrings. Now though, after seeing the Vajra chase up Ranka as well as the galactic fairy in the stadium, well lets just say I was beginning to have my doubts my view of the bigger picture was as good as I thought it had been.

Outwardly though, I shrugged and directed a questioning look at Ozma. While I trusted my squadron and the Pixies to cover my arse in combat, there was no way I trusted them enough to start talking about my ideas regarding the Vajra and their possible objectives.

"No clue," Ozma said simply, shrugging away the attention of our combined gazes. "We know they got to Griffith Park Stadium and tried to kidnap Ranka and Sheryl, but we're not sure if that was their actual goal or simply an attack of opportunity, seeing as by that point the Vajra had almost been wiped out and the only lit area in Island-One was the stadium."

"Speaking of which," I spoke up from my prone position on the bed, "we've still got that to get through that part of the battle."

Ozma nodded, looking glad to be out of the firing line for unanswerable questions. "Sure do," he said, tapping fingers over the terminal. The tac-holo was replaced with a vid, one that I quickly figured must have been the camera feed from Saotome's variable fighter.

It was a split view, between the nose camera and and tail camera, the tag in the corner confirming the unit as being Skull-Five. The front view detailed the Vajra force that had managed to penetrate Island-One, easily three kilometres away over the city and heading towards Griffith Park. The rear view displayed the dark background of space framed by the twisted metal edging – the hole blown into Island-One by the Vajra. Suddenly the motion in the holo stopped.

"I'd like to bring everyone's attention to the tail camera for this next section," Ozma said, with a slight grin. "It may have been edited, just so everyone knows."

What was this about? It wasn't like Ozma to beat around the bush with any topic, let alone the possibility of video editing. Besides, it's not like anything interesting was happening over there...

Oh.

That _wanker_.

Ozma, who had clearly seen the sudden comprehension dawn on my face, unpaused the playback with a grin that basically split his face in two, just as my variable fighter burst through the rapidly closing hole in the shell - backwards. The occupants of my hospital room watched in fascination for a few seconds as the image zoomed in on my out of control fighter as it tumbled ungracefully through the sky of Island-One, completely at the mercy of the laws of physics. A sudden intake of breath from everyone in the room punctuated my craft transforming into GERWALK mode and regaining control, a good ten or so kilometres from where I'd made my hasty entrance into the convoy ship.

Then the room erupted in laughter.

Not just a giggle either – the room rocked with laughter as the combined might of the Pixie and Skull squadrons howled at my now steadied variable fighter. I noticed the playback had been paused, although Alaya knows how Ozma had the motor skill to manage that, seeing as he was doubled up and howling with laughter.

"Holy shit!" Ramaria exclaimed, her rocky voice somehow making it's way through her rough guffaws, "that was hilarious!"

"No kidding," roared Mikhail as he blinked back tears. "Rewind it, rewind it!"

I glanced around the room, hoping to find _anyone_ who wasn't laughing their arse off at my tumble through the darkened skies of Island-One. Alas, it appeared that everyone in the room couldn't help but be more than slightly amused at my piloting. Even the usually timid Nene was laughing outright, gently clutching at her side as she did so. I shot the pink haired Meltran what I thought was an intimidating glare, which had the sole effect of making her laugh harder. At least she had the grace to flush a little.

"I'll have you know," I began in a no nonsense tone once the laughter had died away enough for a voice to be heard, "that was quite a skillful bit of piloting. It's not easy to regain control of a VF going backwards at Mach three following a sudden atmospheric entry." I was a bit put out to say the least, and kept a sour look on my face. At least you could trust this bunch to be consistent when it came to humour - as long as it looked funny, it was ab-sol-utely _hilarious_, regardless of any skill or luck involved.

In spite of my personal feelings on the matter, my proclamation (and a couple of furtive glances at my expression) sparked a fresh wave of laughter throughout the room, one that rose in volume as Ozma finally finished the rewind and played the video again.

Once the laughter had finally petered out, Ozma continued with the video proper, but there wasn't much I hadn't seen before, apart from Saotome chasing down the Vajra that had stolen off with Ranka. I had to admit, despite his initial inability to actually prevent the Vajra from getting away with the green haired girl, it was quite an impressive bit of work.

"Which pretty much sums things up," Ozma concluded. "We're pretty happy with your actions as officer in charge – after our discussions," I assumed 'our' to include Ozma, Klan, Captain Wilder and possibly Mr Bilrer, the owner of SMS, "we can't really say that you'd made a wrong call after you got separated from us in the initial battle, even if your piloting skill was a bit lacking at times - to the point of not being able to bring back your VF-25 in working order," referring to the twisted hunk of metal that my unit had ended up as. I waited for him to continue on that topic and give me an update on the status of my bird, but apparently that was the end of that topic in Ozma's mind, leaving me to continue the conversation.

"Well thanks," I said drily, matching the grin that had appeared on his face. Maybe I'd find out about my variable fighter when the written reports came through.

"And you too Saotome," Ozma continued. "You stuck to orders and showed good initiative when you needed to, congratulations ace."

The blue haired kid took the compliment with good grace, barely registering a flicker of emotion of any kind. Good for him. He managed to survive his first large scale battle with the Vajra and managed to bump his kill count up to ace status at the same time. He had handled himself pretty well in the Island-One skirmish, despite a fairly flaky beginning while out saving the _Dulfim._ I knew the kid had talent, (or else I wouldn't have suggested his recruitment to Ozma) but it wasn't often in this galaxy that I'd gotten the chance to see talent bloom - more often than not it got shot down in it's prime.

I blinked as I realised where my thoughts were taking me. Was I _proud_ of the kid?

"As we've mentioned over the course of this debriefing, we're still not entirely sure what the Vajra goal was with this little incursion," Ozma continued, cutting into my little bout of introspection. "There are a lot of eggheads with a lot of theories though," the graying Squadron Commander said, skimming down his clipboard with a pen. "Most of which are about as far off the mark as you'd expect from a bunch of brains who'd never been involved in combat before. For example, 'probing attack to gauge our defenses'," he continued, tapping his pen on the clipboard to apparently pick an example at random, and the rest of us, bar Saotome, dutifully snorted in dismissal. The blue haired actor looked a bit lost for a second as cogs whirred in his head before he finally understood - if any 'probing attacks' were to have occurred, it would likely have been our first encounter - not to mention throwing away combat units to gauge an enemy's strength was exceedingly inefficient in this day and age of electronic surveillance.

"Not to say these morons don't have a good idea once in a while - mostly when coming up with non-military specific targets for the attack" Ozma mused, "one I'm more inclined to believe is 'primitive attempt at communication', especially for a species so alien to us. Or maybe even 'searching for more victims to probe anally', if I was feeling generous," he finished with a grin on his face which wrenched a guffaw from Ramaria, Mikhail and Klan, and smiles from the rest of us.

Idly, I wondered if Ozma was taking his first suggestion seriously - because it certainly seemed to me that if someone was controlling the Vajra, or causing their attacks, then they must have some way to communicate with the insectoid creatures, or at least be able to predict their behaviour.

"Anyway, I won't bore you guys with the rest of the list - it's on the report that I'll be sending around when I'm back in the office, and I expect you all to have read it within the week." The look on the Squad Commander's face spoke volumes about his personal feelings about spending time in the office - and none of it was good. "In the meantime, I think we're done here. Finally."

Finally indeed. Debriefings were usually never interesting, seeing as they basically consisted of me reliving an event that had already happened - and I had usually already analyzed, as was the case with this one. There was a general scuffle in my hospital room as Ozma started packing up the holo projector and everyone else began to gather whatever belongings they brought with them. My room quickly emptied out, with the surprising exception of the Klan's two direct subordinates who had taken it upon themselves to 'clean up properly', whatever the hell that meant. Or perhaps it was unsurprising. Out of all the people on Frontier, these two had been spending the most time around me, although for the life of me I couldn't fathom their reasons why.

Probably to mess with the new guy, at least in Ramaria's case.

"So, out of here tomorrow huh?" Asked the red haired meltran, breaking the silence as she and Nene finished shutting the windows and dragging the two chairs in the room back to their original positions.

"Yeah. And looking forwards to it too, I might add." Seriously - anything had to be better than sitting around in a hospital bed pretending to recover for another day.

"Any plans?" Ramaria asked, her rocky voice almost sounding a little _too_ casual.

"Not that I'm aware of," I replied cautiously, trying to figure out where she was going with this.

"Good, because it's Friday and that means you should be coming out for a few drinks with us. I'm sure the guys will buy you a few, you know, as celebration for getting out of hospital."

Huh. I really should have seen that coming. Friday night with the pilots and maintenance crew was a bit of a staple at SMS, and I saw no reason not to go. I glanced at Nene to see what she thought about it and saw her usually serene face face light up bright red with embarrassment, as though she was a little kid that had been caught stealing ice-cream from the freezer. Maybe she felt as though she was eavesdropping? We weren't exactly having a private conversation, but Nene will be Nene I guess.

"You coming too?" I asked the pink haired meltran politely.

"Yes!" She exclaimed, her voice sitting somewhere between a whimper and a squeak. I allowed a blank look to filter onto my face as I turned to Ramaria.

"Did she say yes?"

"Pretty sure she did," I was told with a cheeky grin by the more confident of the pair, who looked like she was enjoying watching Nene being put out a little more than she should have. "Anyway, we'd better getting going. Enjoy your last night in bed Shirou."

Nene dropped her hands into her head as she shuffled out the door alongside her squadmate, who nudged her squaddie in the side then burst out in laughter again. I rolled my eyes as they left.

* * *

"Oh yeah, you wrote it off well and proper."

"I noticed that at the time," I told Robbs with a healthy dash of understatement.

We were currently standing in the hangar of the Quarter, right in front of where my VF-25 would normally be parked. The wrecked metal carcass was no-where to be seen however, all of the wreckage being quickly appropriated and sent back to L.A.I. for examination - but not before I'd made sure the data recorder was completely ruined. If they wanted any evidence of what I was doing with their equipment, they'd have to find it forensically.

"The L.A.I. techs don't have any spare frames at the moment, so they're fabricating one from ground up as quickly as they can. It's still be a week or so until it's complete though."

I nodded, not really surprised. "That's the problem with using prototype technology," I noted sagely, and my chief mechanic nodded in sympathy.

"Aye, they want to tweak and adjust, sometimes completely redesign if you're unlucky. Now if you'd wrecked a Nightmare, they'd have another off the factory lines in a day, tops. And have a stockpile of spare frames hanging around anyway."

"After riding a Messiah, I don't think I could care less if I wrecked a Nightmare," I quipped, earning a quick chuckle from the younger man. "Having said that though, is there anything I can ride in case of an emergency?"

"I thought you might ask that," my crew chief said, his foresight further cementing in my mind his ability to keep an eye out for my craft and myself. "So I had a look at the inventory. How do you feel about wearing tights?"

I raised an eyebrow and shot Robbs a curious glance. "Tights?"

"Yeah," he continued with a smile, "the only thing we've got available for use is a spare Queadluun-Rea suit." Queadluun's were the unit flown almost exclusively by macronised meltrans (such as the Pixies) and as such had an… ample amount of free space in the chest area. I suddenly had a flashback to when Klan suggested half-jokingly that I macronise myself and take a Queadluun out for a spin - I really hoped it wouldn't come to that. Not that I had anything against the Queadluun suits themselves, but for some reason I just didn't like the idea of Klan getting one up on me, even if she wasn't aware of it.

Huh.

Why was I thinking like that? If it came down to it, of course I'd pilot the damn thing in order to save lives - why was I turning into a kid again? Why were my emotions even remotely coming to the fore in such a mundane situation?

I shook my head with a wry grin, banishing those thoughts. "That's not going to happen," I told him with a faked chuckle, in order to keep the conversation on track. "Not in a million years. I'll go talk to Ozma about it, maybe he has a plan."

* * *

"You're kidding me," I told Ozma flatly.

Ozma glanced over the top of a pile of paperwork and gave me a bemused look.

"Of course I'm kidding you," I was told. Well thank Alaya for that! "You know as well as I do that cross training in the Queadluun's simply isn't worth the time and money when you're only going to be out of action for two weeks, not to mention the extra stress on resources by having you macronised every time you're on duty. Just hit the simulators, there's not much we can do."

Pretty much what I expected, although Ozma's sense of humour definitely needed some work as far as I was concerned.

* * *

"Aaaaaand then I dropped a lock on at least twenty of the assholes closing in on Shirou, and blew them all sky high!"

Ramaria punctuated the sentence by throwing her arms in a wide circle, as though to imitate the explosion from a micro-missile. The rest of the maintenance guys at the table laughed uproariously, despite the fact this was the third time in about ten minutes that the red haired meltran had told them the story of how she 'pulled Shirou's bacon out of the fire' in the battle last week. I rolled my eyes and took a sip out of my beer as Ramaria took a good long pull out of the jug in front of her.

"You might want to slow down there, oh savior of mine," I floated across the table. Ramaria was well and truly hammered, as per usual, and the accompanying maintenance boys certainly weren't helping halt her quick slide into inebriaty. Ramaria _winked_ back at me before finishing the contents of the jug without taking a breath. I let a sigh escape my lips. Over the years I'd seen plenty of good people ruined by over-consumption of alcohol, and it was never easy to watch, despite my attempts to keep the rest of the world at an arms length. The problem was that you could never confront these people upfront about it without them getting defensive about it - the old English saying about leading a horse to water came to mind.

"Slow down when I'm dead," she shot back across the table at me, her voice even more gravelly than usual. I shrugged off her reply - it was her life after all.

"Hope you'll be good enough to help me carry her home," I said to the pink haired Nene, who had a seat right next to me.

"Yesshir!" Nene squeaked excitedly, bringing her hand up to her face in a mock salute. I took a closer look at her face, which caused her to blush furiously, and waved a finger around in front of her face. Her eyes followed it, a split second too slow for my liking. Figures. Nene was drunk too - although on the bright side, that was due to poor tolerance (I'd seen her put down three drinks in as many hours) as opposed to due to sheer volume of consumption. I dropped my head into hands.

"Hrm?" Asked my tall meltran compatriot. "What's wrong? Shiroooou?"

I felt a finger drive firmly into my shoulder, then another and another as Nene unleashed a barrage of pokes upon my person.

"Shiroooou? Heeeey, tell meee!"

I pulled my head up and looked the meltran in the eye, replacing my exasperated expression with a slightly more friendly one. Nene appeared not to notice my change of posture as her finger continue to jab me in the shoulder for a few moments. Then the pink haired meltran seemed to realise what she was doing and jerked her hand away guiltily.

"You're both roaring drunk, that's whats wrong," I told her with a smile I really didn't feel. "And now I'm gonna have to drag you both back to the Quarter."

"We're both big girls," Nene asserted, sitting up straighter and pushing her reasonably well endowed chest out in an attempt to display some of this maturity, that to be fair, was normally displayed by the two Pixie's. Just not tonight.

My reply was cut short as something in my coat pocket buzzed. That something happened to be the display for the IFT-4088 tracker I'd planted in Sheryl's bag, which I'd set to vibrate when the tracker had moved more than one hundred metres from it's usual resting location, which I had assumed was Sheryl's hotel room. Despite that, this was the first time the notification had been set off, which went a long way to confirming for me the number of handbags owned by that particular young woman.

Rather than take the device out right there, and run the risk of being questioned by the pilots and maintenance guys surrounding me (because if anyone was going to be able to easily determine I was holding a military-grade tracker display in this bar, of course it would be the damn people I was sitting with), I excused myself and made my way back to the toilets, pulling the device out of my jacket pocket when I was rather uncomfortably ensconced in a particularly odorous stall. I quickly called up the tracker's holo and zoomed in on the location of the red dot, which was slowing making it's way north from the Ritz-Carlton hotel. I judged the pace that the tracker was moving at to be not very fast, almost meandering, and given the time was just passing nine, if I had to guess, I'd say she was going for some fresh air.

There was a possibility worth chasing up here - I could catch up to the galactic fairy and have a proper chat about what happened in Griffith Park Stadium five nights ago, or at the very least finally confirm with one hundred percent certainty that the tracker was actually planted in her bag. I shut down the display and slid it back into my pocket, then made my way out into the bar area proper, waving my goodbyes to the SMS members spread out around the place. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the person who resisted the most to my early departure was Ramaria, who demanded I accept her challenge to see who could finish their beer the quickest - a challenge I idly dismissed by pointing out she still hadn't gotten a replacement for the jug she'd finished earlier.

Getting out to the San Francisco part of town took me half an hour by train, during which time the tracker had meandered through the Downtown area into South of Market. Fairly unusual, I thought, as most of the shopping was to be had around Union Square at this time of night. Regardless, I quickly double checked the tracker signal at the train station and took off in the general direction of the signal.

Ten minutes later I was really starting to question Sheryl's choice of cafe's. As in, I couldn't figure out where she was heading at all. I whipped out the display again and tapped the holo into activation. Hu~uh. The tracker had stopped moving three blocks south of where I was – in one of the seedier areas of town.

That spelled trouble, for sure. Whether it was trouble for Sheryl or trouble for me was the real question. I opened a pair of my circuits, pulling odo from one and feeding it into the imperfections in my legs, reinforcing them for the leap I made into the fire escape on the side of the building I was walking next to. I needed to get in fast, in case Sheryl was in trouble, but at the same time coming in from height allowed me to assess the situation when I arrived.

Given the pre-Space War One nature of the buildings in the section of town, moving from fire escape to fire escape was quite easy, and I covered the ground to the tracker's location in less than a minute.

Nothing.

From my vantage point halfway up a building, the alley the tracker was transmitting from was completely empty. I swept the rooftops for anything, but couldn't spot anything. I quickly slipped the display out of my jacket pocket and confirmed the tracker was transmitting from somewhere in this alley, but I couldn't spot anything. The whole thing reeked of a setup.

I funneled odo into my eyes, increasing my effective resolution, and scanned the alley again. There! On the ground was a fancy looking pen.

I hadn't seen that particular pen before, but the royal blue colouring and cursive script reading 'Sheryl Nome' were fairly good indicators that such an object could indeed belong to the galactic fairy, and it's position along the pavement could have been indicative of the pen having fallen out of her bag by accident.

Well, I guess that solved that mystery. I flexed my legs and jumped down to the pen – these trackers aren't easy to get a hold of, and this one is still working, which makes it worth recycling. I snatched the pen off the ground and examined it briefly, my reinforced eyes easily picking out the transmitter attached to it.

Pocketing the pen, I looked down the alley, trying to determine which way Sheryl went. Giving that up as hopeless (concrete doesn't leave the best footprints to follow), I coiled my legs to hit the rooftops.

Shit. A slight change in the air currents on the back of my neck warned me of something incoming from behind, something coming in _fast_.

I half managed to turn my body, just as a lance of pain veritably exploded in my lower left ribcage, splattering thick red blood across the pavement. I spat out a mouthful of blood as I looked down at the sharpened blade extending from my lower left chest.

Well. That's just fucking dandy.

* * *

_Author's note:_

Thanks for the reviews and the prods to keep me going, you guys know who you are :) Long time no see guys. There's a list of reasons, some usual (Dota 2, ME3, Diablo 3, new anime), some a bit further out there (going overseas for a laser conference in San Jose and associated preparation + holiday time), and some more recent (watching the Curiosity landing instead of spell checking). But I made it here somehow! Part of what made this hard to write was the whole debriefing part - it felt like I was basically rewriting the last two chapters, which made it slow going.

I do feel bad the Shirou just seems to be getting the shit kicked out of him at every turn, but I think he's man enough to take it and move on. This chapter is starting the 2nd major plot arc of Frontier as the characters try to figure out what's happening rather than react to the Vajra attacks, and Shirou is no exception - and he has a head start.

Take it easy guys, and thanks again for reading :)


	12. Precarious Dance

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 12: Precarious Dance

* * *

I stared down at the blade that had violently ejected out the front of my chest milliseconds ago in abject surprise. How on earth…

_**PAIN.**_

Oh no. Oh nonononono.

_**PAIN. HURT.**_

The incredible pain of having my left lung skewered, then ruptured in one movement, along with losing a rib as the blade punched its way out of my chest cavity was overwhelming - I couldn't concentrate. I needed to get out of here.

_**RAGE.**_

Shit. I should have been prepared. I tried to take a breath and spasmed in pain. I needed to get out, to retreat or turn the tables somehow, to live on. There was no way I would be killed here, no way!

_**FIGHT.**_

Fuck you, Alaya, you won't have me just yet!

_red descended as the pain receded suddenly. magic circuits flared, saturating with odo begging to be used. heedless of injury, turning, tearing more of my useless flesh away in order to round on the enemy. hands open, judging the creation of twin blades. hypothesizing the structure, preparing the materials, synthesizing the creation, imposing the experiences. weapons in hand, turn completed. enemy spotted for the first time. surprise as enemy dodges first strike. recover. second strike impeded by enemy's weapon. wrist mounted blade. long, approximately seventy centimeters. covered in blood and organs. off-hand strike, aimed at leg. enemy jumps back, displays signs of overt surprise. odo fed into legs. rearrange footing to avoid pool of my blood. leaping charge to take advantage of enemy confusion._

_must kill. kill kill kill. _

_enemy hesitates. counter-charges. too slow. dual strike at enemy face. strikes impeded again by enemy weapon. flood arms with odo, increase pressure. enemy blade shatters. fluid rising up esophagus. can't swallow. enemy steps inside my guard. slow. inept. aim mouth at enemy eyes, cough. enemy splattered in red fluid. enemy halts motion, retreats, quickly, wiping at eyes. too quickly. enemy is non-human. change strategy. overwhelming force required. pour odo into twin blades. internal structural failure. weapons break. _**overedge**_. more deadly. enemy grunts, leaps backwards to disengage. charge to close distance. enemy leaps onto rooftop. enemy out of sight. _

_chase. kill. kill kill kill. _Kill, sure, but not now – this arsehole probably had a lot of useful information I could squeeze out of him. I needed control. This is my mind. My body!

_step forwards, leg coiled. stumble. slip. _Mine, you bastard of a counter-force.

MINE!

And with that, the red haze lifted, allowing me to register sensory input that wasn't directly correlated to battle. Not that it was easy - I'd torn a gaping wound in my side that was pumping out blood at a prodigious rate. I would have felt light headed if I could make space in my head for any feeling but pure pain. I knew that one day Alaya would have me, but I didn't intend for it to be today - desperately I grabbed onto odo from my closing magic circuits.

My body spasmed violently as I hurled another fountain of blood from my mouth. I couldn't keep control over all the circuits I had open, not in this state. I funneled the odo I was desperately grasping for into the boundary field my adoptive father had set up inside me – the one that would accelerate my healing.

Fire roared through my body as the healing process began to take hold, and I screamed. I hadn't even bothered to perform a structural grasp magecraft on my body to determine exactly what had been damaged, yet – simply the feel of blood in my lungs and the feel of warm fluids pouring down the side of my body left me in no doubt that I was in a life threatening situation.

After the initial burst of prana into my healing boundary field, I managed to banish enough pain to keep two of my circuits open and feeding mana into my boundary field. It was a very slow process – it took about ten minutes of (attempted) deep breathing and incredibly painful meditation for me to even pull myself upright into a sitting position. As I did so I abruptly realised that I was still holding the Overedge forms of Kanshou and Bakuya – the two large blades and the sheer volume of blood splattered around the alley probably contributed greatly to the fact I wasn't bothered by anyone while my healing was beginning. Let's face it; barring anyone in a police or military uniform, no-one would want to have anything to do with a bloodied body grasping tightly to a pair of overly large blades in a dark alley late at night.

I carefully released the blades, ignoring the shimmering prana burst as the world of Frontier crushed the weapons that should not be existing right now. Gradually I shuffled myself against the closest wall, using it as a support while I panted heavily, drawing in sweet, sweet oxygen from my newly repaired lung. Not that that meant I was completely healed – not by a long shot. The searing pain every time I took a breath indicated that my lungs were still exposed to the outside air – something I confirmed quickly by pulling together enough of my concentration to perform a structural grasp on myself.

Sure enough, my lung was fine now, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. The rest of my flesh had undergone the minimum of repair – basically thin coatings of cells over the more exposed organs. Enough veins and arteries had been sealed to prevent fatal blood loss, but there was still a considerable amount of blood oozing out. My ribcage was still partly shattered from where my opponent's arm blade had cut an exit wound in my chest.

For the next twenty minutes I remained stretched back against the grimy alley wall, waiting as my body rebuilt itself. Slowly the burning pain began to subside as the regenerating flesh began to seal my internal organs from the atmosphere, and my ribcage began to form new bones and re-knit itself together. As the intense pain faded, it was replaced with a deep ache that permeated my body, which made moving painful – but at least it didn't require as much of my concentration to keep in check.

Which meant I could figure out exactly what the hell had happened. I was going for the pen, which seemed logical at the time. I wanted the tracker back, and I had little reason to believe that anyone on Frontier could detect the tracker. Hell, they were supposed to be passive and undetectable! On top of that, I was confident enough in my abilities to be able to dispatch anyone trying to set a trap. So, my reasoning to drop down and investigate was logical enough.

How wrong was I though, I mused. Good work Shirou. Way to get overconfident there buddy.

Well, there went the idea of using trackers to keep an eye on Sheryl's movements. Whoever set me up clearly identified the bug I had planted and used it to bait me, which meant, quite simply, they'd just be able to keep doing the same thing. Whoever had identified the tracker was obviously a pretty skilled hacker or electronic engineer in order to trace and identify the signal – which made me immediately dismiss Sheryl as being the one who set me up. The galactic fairy just didn't simply have the know-how to do so.

There was a fairly high chance that whoever set me up was fairly close to Sheryl though, close enough to get into and out of her handbags without causing a ruckus. Either that or a really good thief. Or maybe the guy who managed to gut me.

That thought brought my thoughts back to the fight. My memories were hazy, but my assailant had some _very_ striking features. His ridiculously tight pants, for starters – blue with darker edging, and a giant _hole_ cut right down the middle of a similarly skin-tight jacket that exposed a ten centimeter-wide strip of flesh from his sternum to his pants. Probably not built for protection, that outfit. And that was because my opponent was probably a cyborg, or at the very least implanted. That one I could pick by the nondescript antenna-like chip attached to his forehead just above his hairline. Such external chips were the hallmark of early experiments into implantation and scientific transhumanism from the early 2040's, and while external 'chipping' was becoming a rarity these days, it wasn't unheard of, especially for the more machine-than-man variants.

The superhuman speed at which he conducted his macabre business also lent weight to that theory. Of course, there were a few other possible reasons for that, but none of them really fit in with the visible chip on his head - dead apostles and magi were both very violently anti-technology. The final details I took with me were the dark red eyes of my assailant. All in all, my new friend was definitely not inconspicuous - if I kept my ear to the ground I should be able to find out _something_ about him.

A fresh surge of pain permeated my chest cavity, and I bit back a yelp as I performed another structural grasp to find out how my body was responding to the healing. I discovered that the sudden pain was caused by a rapidly regrowing rib, and there wasn't a lot I could do about that except grit my teeth and bear it.

My new friend had also retreated without really bothering to keep an eye on this scene, a fact that was blatantly obvious considering he hadn't come back to finish me off. Not that I'd have deliberately made it easy for him if that were the case, but for all intents and purposes I had essentially been defenseless for the first twenty minutes or so after he left my line of sight, and if he'd bothered to check back on this location he would have found me half-dead and probably finished the job. So it was safe to say that he either thought me dead before he left (highly unlikely, seeing as I was preparing to chase him down the last he saw), or was thanking his lucky stars that the apparently immortal me wasn't chasing him down and painting a rooftop somewhere with his blood (or pneumatic fluid, as the case may be).

Either way: lucky me. While I may be fated to become a Counter-Guardian, I still couldn't stomach the thought of becoming Archer. I'm sure that it was something I'd get used to after Alaya had wrung me out and sucked me dry by throwing me at the worst humanity had to offer enough times, but at the moment I was still going strong even after four decades. What worried me more was my compulsion to keep fighting after my new friend stuck a rather hefty wrist blade through my chest cavity. The smart thing to do there would have been to retreat as fast as possible, recover, and re-engage on my own terms. What I _actually_ did however reeked of compulsion. Was I being compelled into continuing to fight an unfavorable battle by the Counter-Force? Was I reaching the end of my usefulness as merely an agent of Alaya, and was it trying to force my ascension to the rank of a true Counter-Guardian by forcing me to die in battle?

It made sense, and it worried me greatly. Would I reach a point where it would simply compel me to suicide? Could it even do that?

Those thoughts were nothing compared to the alternative though - my emotions getting the better of me. Emotions in a fight tended to lead to making irrational decisions, such as attacking a much more powerful opponent in a fit of rage, or acting overly defensive when you've been intimidated. In extreme cases, it could lead to going toe-to-toe with your future-shifted (and far more skilled) self over a set of beliefs and ideals, with everything on the line.

Okay, so maybe you needed _some_ emotion in battle. You had to have passion for what you believed in at least, or else you wouldn't be bothered fighting in the first place, and I always had that passion to save people. It was when that passion stretched too far one way or another that worried me. Almost forty minutes ago I almost killed a possible source of information. I could live with that if I wasn't completely in control of my actions, but if my battle rage had been caused by me snapping of my own accord… Who's to say that one day I won't just snap again and kill a truckload of innocent people in order to knock down one bad guy? That was my modus operandi for that very dark period of my life after Rin had been killed - a period in my life that was only brought to a close by the realization that riding my anger that far had put me but one step away from becoming the Counter-Guardian Emiya.

If I couldn't keep a lid on my more mundane emotions, eventually that rage could overtake me again. I needed to clamp down tighter on the box in my head that stored those feelings, just in case.

With a groan, I heaved myself upright, bouncing off the wall unsteadily as I did so. I wasn't fully healed yet, but I really needed to get out of here before news of this reached people who would come and investigate. I looked down at my clothes and sighed. They were completely drenched in my blood, which made them completely unwearable if I planned to get home via any method that involved me appearing in a public place, such as a train station. Using the wall as an aid I slowly made my way to the mouth of the alley before peering out. For the next fifteen or so minutes I skulked around the back alleys of South of Market, taking care to avoid all contact with people, and went dumpster diving at every opportunity to find _any_ clothes that weren't blood soaked and all but ripped to pieces. Eventually I lucked out and found a clothes donation bin from which I stole a rather unattractive pair of brown pants and an old, itchy, woolen jumper. I briefly considered dumping my blood soaked clothes in to replace what I'd stolen, but the SMS logo embroidered on the jacket's chest made that a stupid idea. I fished around some more and quickly found a patchy red towel that I quickly bundled my bloody gear into.

From there it was an unsteady walk back to the train station and a painful ride home as every bump the train hit seemed to set off fireworks in my still healing body. The security guard at the barracks gave me a once over as I approached, her dour expression morphing into a superior grin.

"Big night huh?" I was asked, which gave me an easy way out for explaining why I was hobbling all over the place and generally looking sorry for myself.

"Yeah, it wasn't bad," I croaked, not really having to feign that voice at all. I wobbled theatrically in order to reinforce her impression of my drunkenness, which earned me a slight chuckle.

"Don't get too lost on your way to your room," she said cheerfully, waving me on. I tried to return the smile. Pretty sure I failed miserably though.

Another two minutes later and I was lying flat on the bunk in my room, bloody clothes heaved into the laundry hamper and my new acquisitions in a rather untidy pile on the floor. I performed one last structural grasp on my body to confirm that my body had been completely rebuilt on a cellular level before finally closing my circuits and shutting my eyes.

* * *

A dull thump woke me and I shot upright, ignoring the deep ache that permeated my torso as I did so, and quickly scanned my room. There was only one source of light - the open portal from my room into the corridor, which was cut with a human sized silhouette. I immediately opened my magic circuits and brought my arms in front of me protectively. I was ready to Trace at a moment's notice, and I still hadn't identified the visitor when a raspy, rocky, yet decidedly female voice floated from the figure.

"Shirou?"

I released the breath I had been holding and closed my circuits. "Ramaria?" I replied, and the silhouette's head bobbed up and down slightly, before reaching a darkened arm down to the console that controlled the room's environment - lighting, air conditioning and the like. Instantly the lights sprung on at full brightness, and a second later I heard the door thump shut again. I didn't actually _see_ it shut because I was too busy squeezing my eyes closed and groaning.

"Turn the lights down," I grumbled, putting a hand over my eyelids to cut out even more of the blinding light. I heard a grunt and a shuffle, and eventually the yellow glow that had managed to seep through the meager protection of my eyelids and hands disappeared. I gingerly opened my eyes, finding the room at what I considered to be a much more tolerable level of darkness - just enough to see, but not enough to ruin my freshly woken up eyeballs.

"What are you doing here?" I groaned. I glanced quickly at my bedside clock. Sweet Alaya! It was 3:14 in the morning! "It's quarter past three. That's too damn early."

The red haired meltran gave a rather nonchalant shrug and pulled a half-finished bottle of whiskey out of her jacket pocket. "Ezzie told me you looked like you were having fun when you came back," she slurred. Alaya damned chatty security guards! I shook my head slightly and stared at her as she fumbled her way around the room, eventually coming to a halt at my desk and busying herself looking for something - I assumed glasses to drink from. "Thought you might want to carry on," she continued happily.

I took in a deep breath and pinched my nose. "You're drunk aren't you?"

"Absolutely shitfaced," she confirmed cheerfully, if a bit slurred. I rolled my eyes skyward. Why me?

"Couldn't carry on with Klan, Nene or Ozma?" I asked, keeping my voice reasonable. After my reflection in the alley, I decided it was important to make a fresh effort to keep my emotions under control, even the more mundane ones.

"Noooooooooooooo. Nonononoooo. Ozma never shows on Friday nights," the meltran said with a flippant shrug. Fair enough. "I just finished putting Nene to bed. She's so hammered she passed out while we were walking back and I had to carry her in." Unusual for Nene to be that drunk, but if she was out this late with her low alcohol tolerance, I guess that was a foregone conclusion. "Klan..."

At this point the red haired meltran stared me straight in the eye. Sure, those eyes were glassy and unresponsive, but it was about as close to seeing her sober tonight as I was likely to get. She shuddered.

"I don't interrupt Klan after I've been drinking. _Ever._"

Well that was an untold story waiting to see the light of day, but I couldn't really be bothered chasing it up. Instead I ground a palm into my eye socket in order to drive out away the fatigue I was feeling. Didn't work too well. "How the hell did you get in here anyway?" I asked of Ramaria, who had finally appeared to have given up looking for glasses. She uncorked the bottle and took a quick swig.

"Lost my key," she said simply, wiping her mouth with a sleeve as she did so. Her glassy eyes swayed around my room again and settled on my bed. "Ezzie gave me a security master key to get Nene to bed, so I thought I'd abuse the privilege and party on with you." Ramaria took two steps to cross the room, stumbled on the clothes strewn over the floor then plopped herself down on my bed, somehow managing to pull her feet up to sit cross-legged in front of me. I winced as my bed bounced under her settling weight, the motions jostling my tender, freshly remade flesh.

"You alright Shirou?" The drunk meltran asked me, leaning forward much too far in order to peer at my face.

"Just a bit tender," I grunted in reply, carefully pulling myself into a sitting position. Abruptly I realized that the only clothes I was wearing were my undergarments, which I quickly (and tastefully) covered with the blankets. Ramaria gave my naked torso a once-over before offering me the bottle.

"Best thing for that is to jump right back on the horse that threw you," she told me. I waved the drink away.

"Not tonight," I said with feeling.

"Suit yourself," she told me, taking another quick swig. Her eyes scanned my barely lit room as she did so, completely unable or unwilling to read the atmosphere. Sure, I wasn't going to straight up kick her out, but anyone with a sliver of social know-how would have realized I wasn't up for a friendly chat and a few drinks right now.

Then I remembered I was dealing with Ramaria.

"Pretty bare room you've got here," she slurred, "You've got a terminal and a, and a, and a desk. No books, no porno mags, no posters, no pictures of girlfriends..."

"So?" I asked, rather uncharitably. I shook my head and reined in my irritation again.

"Not the kind of room I expected from a vet," she said, swaying slightly as she did so and completely missing my tone. I guess there was one advantage of her being drunk – she probably wasn't going to take offense at anything I said or did, if she even remembered it at all in the morning. "Most of the older guys have trophies, or awards, or mementos of where they've served."

"First of all, I'm not _that_ old." Blatant lie. "Secondly, do you just wander into people's rooms and categorize them for fun?"

"Sure," she replied with an overly broad grin. "I'm friends with everyone!"

She probably was, at that. I hadn't really heard a bad thing about Ramaria since I'd gotten to Frontier a couple of months ago, and she was incredibly chatty with the technicians and bridge crew, although perhaps a bit less so with the pilots for some reason.

"And is there anything wrong with having a mostly empty room?" I asked, deciding that if she wasn't going to bugger off, I may as well entertain myself until she got bored and left. If that meant poking fun at the Pixie, well so be it.

Ramaria laughed, or to be more precise, choked out something that could be construed as a laugh. Her facial expression indicated she definitely found something funny though. "Not at all, I think it reflects your personality. Oooh, what's that?"

The red haired meltran must have still been scanning my room, because upon that statement she wildly flung her arm out to point at something on the other side of the room. I turned my head to figure out what she was looking at.

Suddenly, I _really_ wished I had just run the younger meltran out of my room forcibly.

"Nothing," I said sullenly.

"Buuuuut it's so big," Ramaria said. "Can't believe I missed it earlier!" I began cursing in my head before dumping my anger in a metaphorical box and sealing it up. Alaya was I useless at this!

"I'mma have a look," Ramaria declared with gusto, and rolled herself off the bed with a fairly audible thump. Before she could drag herself upright though, I shot a hand out, ignoring the pain as I did so, and grabbed her solidly around the wrist, using the leverage to drag her so she was sitting against the side of the bed. She released an indignant yelp as her back collided with my bed frame.

"It's personal," I said quietly. The object that had gotten her attention was the black case containing the weapon I simply called Archer's bow.

"That's fine, that's fine," she whined, completely oblivious to my reluctant tone, "I promise I won't tell anyone if you tell me about it."

Of all the people in the world to bust into my room while drunk, it had to be the one without any sense of personal space whatsoever.

"No."

"Pleeeeease? I'll let you ask me something personal." She was bargaining now, which I supposed was a good sign – it meant she was backing down and realizing that demands weren't going anywhere.

"No," I replied again, just as quickly.

"Pleeease?"

I wish I knew why she was so interested in the damn bow. I opened my mouth to reply, but decided to think about it rationally for a second, rather than shoot down her request again. It would cost me next to nothing to tell her that it was simply a bow I didn't use. Sure, it would have been an easier lie to sell if I hadn't have told her it was personal earlier, but hey, she was hammered. She probably wouldn't remember the finer details in the morning. In return I'd be able to hopefully leverage some blackmail material, which would be nice to have to prevent these little invasions of my privacy.

Or I could figure out why she was such an alcoholic and stop her from slowly killing herself.

I sighed. "Fine," I said grudgingly, playing it up for all I was worth. "Me first though," I added, trying to make it sound more demanding than I actually was. Maybe she'd be able to give me some idea as to what to do about the damn bow as well, as slim a chance as that was. Who knew?

"Yaaay!" Ramaria cheered, throwing her free hand up in the air and almost whacking me in the face in the process. "What's the question?"

I paused for a second; trying to figure out if it was worth trying to be discreet in what I asked. I quickly decided against it - Ramaria was too straightforward to read between the lines, especially when she was this drunk. "Why do you drink so much?"

I felt the muscles in Ramaria's arm tense for a second before the meltran slumped slightly. I relaxed my hold on the arm that was holding the whiskey, and she let that arm slump to the floor, the bottle punctuating the action nicely with a dull clink. "That's a bit too personal, isn't it?" The young meltran mused quietly, the slur in her voice almost disappearing. "I was expecting you to ask about boyfriends, or embarrassing sexual activities, or embarrassing moments in general. You know, blackmail material."

"Too bad," I replied shortly. "We can call the deal off if you don't like the question." Which would be a win for me. I suddenly felt a twang of something, remorse maybe, for being less than understanding in my reply, which I quickly forced down.

I heard the scratching of metal on glass and abruptly realized that the red haired meltran was opening the bottle again. "No, you agreed, and I agreed. Good on you for getting the jump on me. Gotta be more drunk to talk about this though," she said morosely, before taking a rather deep swig of the golden liquid. And another. And another. The bottle came away from her lips with an audible pop, and she didn't bother to put the lid back on before slumping even further down against the side of my bed.

"I was," a pause, "I had a boyfriend," she began again. "I'd known him throughout school - one of the humans who lived on Island-Three. He was one of the more active students, and very friendly. We used to always compete against each other in the sporting events where we could, saw each other as friendly rivals, that sort of thing."

I nodded to show I was listening, then realized she wasn't looking at me anyway.

"We both had pretty poor grades, but were fairly athletic. Guess where we ended up," she said.

I didn't really have to guess hard. She was a meltran after all, and if she was working for SMS now, it obviously meant she spent some time in the military. "The Spacey," I said, fairly confidently. It didn't hurt that I'd read her service record either.

"Sure did. We were assigned to different squadrons of course, but we kept in touch and eventually started dating. I dunno when the transition from friendship to love happened for me exactly, but the whole thing felt right," she continued, sounding a little more upbeat. "We used to drink and party a lot, like good rookies." At this point Ramaria stifled a chuckle. "Heh, good times. I wonder if Tendulkar ever got his nose straightened," she said in a distinctly reminiscent tone. Well, as reminiscent as she could get anyway.

I briefly wondered if Tendulkar was the name of her ex-boyfriend or some mutual friend before deciding that this late at night that a) I didn't care, and b) it didn't really matter anyway.

"Anyway," the red haired meltran continued, "there's not a whole lot more to say. We thought we were star-crossed lovers, seeing as how everything had been going right in our lives. Then all of a sudden, he got shot down by rogue zentraedi on a patrol mission. And that was that."

Hrm. That was a far more permanent definition of the prefix 'ex' than I had assumed, which made me suddenly a bit more sympathetic to the sob story she was weaving for me. I thought she'd just gone through a bad break-up, judging from what I'd picked up in earlier conversations - but death of your lover was something I empathized with considerably, especially if they were as well connected as Ramaria made it out to be.

"Sorry to hear that," I wound out by rote. Knowing Ramaria, she probably wouldn't be playing this for sympathy.

"I didn't really know how to cope with that," she shrugged, matter-of-factly. "My boyfriend, my closest friend, who I'd known for about fifteen years was suddenly a handful of atoms spread out across vacuum. I was a wreck, but that didn't mean I could suddenly stop doing my duty for the Spacey, so I had to pack it up and soldier on."

This story was remarkably similar to mine, I reflected, which meant I had a fairly good idea of what was going to happen next.

"But I had no idea how to do that properly, so when a squaddie of mine suggested we hit the booze to take my mind off it, I went with the flow. I packed away my feelings and drowned them in a never-ending party when I was off duty."

Honestly, I should be a fortuneteller or something. In all seriousness though, we could almost be walking copies in terms of emotional trauma caused by dead lovers - the differences being that she wasn't stupid enough to have tethered herself to a rather unbenevolent force that guided humanity away from self-destruction; she only had a few years to sort it out compared to my four or so decades; and finally, whereas I spent all my time channeling my rage and killing zentraedi, Ramaria spent all her time wallowing in pity and drinking herself stupid. I very nearly could have been that girl - what slight differences would it have taken for me to pick up the bottle rather than pick up my blades?

"You know," I said quietly, interrupting her story, "there are better ways to grieve." Not that I was an expert, by any means, but you didn't have to be a genius to figure out anything was better than how Ramaria dealt with the problem.

"Yeah, that's the common reply," she mumbled into her bottle. "But I don't care anymore. I drink to enjoy myself now, but when I've had a few drinks I start to remember what I had, so I drink more to bury the pain."

I really didn't need to step in here. In fact, I probably shouldn't at all - any advice I could offer would be hypocritical to the extreme, and Ramaria usually managed to keep it professional on duty, so what happened out of office hours wasn't really my business.

_But._

I had opened this can of worms, and while it sounded like she'd reined in the issue somewhat, if she didn't properly shut this problem down soonish there was always the possibility she'd slide all the way back down. And if that happened, there'd be the possibility that she'd let her squadron down when they needed her most, which would have a knock-on effect through the rest of SMS and cause unnecessary deaths.

There. Rationalized by solid thinking, and certainly not because I just want to help. Having said that, I wondered how much of what I was planning to say would stick with her tonight - a quick glance revealed that the meltran in question was staring at the roof of my room, with a rather glazed expression on her face. I did notice her eyes slowly rotate to focus on my face when I moved my head though, so at least she wasn't asleep.

"I went through the same kind of thing," I began, hoping to build a bit of common ground and imply my experience in the matter. "My first," and only, but I wasn't going to voice that, "lover was killed by rogue zentraedi. Right in front of me too."

"You seem well adjusted despite that, unlike me," Ramaria slurred after a second or so worth of thought.

Yeah, well, I've had forty years to bury those emotions. Small wonder I'm better at it than you. Fortunately my brain-to-mouth filter was working correctly, so I didn't end up voicing those thoughts.

"No more so than you," I replied. "You said it yourself - you're everyone's friend. You seem to be coping fine, except for raging binge drinking sessions."

"Yeah, but you're everyone's friend, minus the drinking problem - or any problems," she said glumly, taking the time to stretch her legs fully out along the floor.

"I had my fair share of problems at the time, they just manifested differently. I volunteered for just about every high risk mission that was going around, and spent most of my down time as a belligerent ball of hate." Mostly true - I spent most of my down time sneaking out of bases to find zentraedi to kill - and it wasn't hard to find zentraedi in the immediate aftermath of Space War One on Earth. The fact that I had a 'kill first, ask questions later' attitude also got a fair few zentraedi that were allied with the U.N. killed. It certainly wasn't my finest hour.

"So how'd you get over that then?"

"It took me some time, but I managed to box up those emotions and keep a firm grip on them. It helps to have something else to focus on, so you don't keep coming back to thinking about the bad times." In my case it was focusing on how to not die in a hurry. Becoming a Counter-Guardian after death kind of makes you want to live as long as possible.

"You're strong," Ramaria murmured, barely loud enough for me to hear. "Or stupid."

A twinge of irritation shot through me. "How do you figure that?" I grunted.

"I tried that," she slurred. "Didn't work. Made me a lot worse for a while. I needed to get it out to get over the worst of it. Guess I'm still doing that now though." Her eyes focused on the ceiling for a second - and indication that maybe, just maybe, a straight thought had passed through her brain. "You can't keep those feelings under lock and key in your head Shirou, they'll fuck you right up. Unless you're strong."

I sat in a stony silence. So much for me handing out good advice - Ramaria had just rejected it outright and turned the tables on me, effectively telling me that my method of doing things was wrong. Or that I was strong enough to handle doing it the hard way.

"It's worked for me so far," I eventually allowed, falling on my five or so decades of empirical evidence of keeping myself together to back my words up with.

"Will it work forever?" The young meltran asked with uncomfortable insight.

"Don't see why not."

This was getting incredibly off topic, to say the least. I'd asked her why she drank so much, and five minutes later we're in a deep and meaningful regarding the best way to deal with grief. Suddenly I wished I had just stuck to my gut response earlier, and just told Ramaria where to shove it when she started whining about the bow. Not because this topic was pissing me off, definitely not. It was just getting beyond the scope of our agreement.

Fortunately, the red haired meltran was either getting bored with where this conversation was going or was actually getting pissed off about it, because she slowly pulled herself upright, thankfully leaving the bottle of whiskey on the ground, and unsteadily made her way towards the large black box that contained Archer's bow.

"Your turn," she said, her voice regaining a small measure of clarity. "What's in here?"

Ramaria was running her hands all over the case like a child with a new toy, desperate to open it and peek inside. I sighed. I didn't really want to see the damn thing, but logically it shouldn't matter whether I tell her or show her, or both. And if it would get her out of my room quicker, then I wouldn't have to deal with her running commentary, which was somehow making me remarkably uncomfortable considering how drunk she currently was.

"Bring it over here," I said grudgingly, prompting a muted cheer of excitement from the Pixie squad member. She grabbed the case and spun on the spot, trying (and failing) to march in a straight line back to my bed. Ramaria eventually managed to wobble the case onto my bed alongside where I was sitting, and plopped herself down alongside it, the grin on her face making absolutely no apologies for the fingers ghosting towards the latches of the case. In response to her actions I merely grimaced uncomfortably as her jostling set off touchy, freshly rebuilt nerves.

How on earth Ramaria managed to flip from solemn and thoughtful to energetic and child-like in the space of five seconds was something that only she would know, although I was more than willing to believe the alcohol had something to do with it. I gave the red-haired meltran a glance and somehow managed to catch her eyes, which were glazed, but wide open. I rolled my eyes theatrically, faking humor and nonchalance as best I could.

"Go ahead then," I told her. "Open it up."

There was a somewhat embarrassing fumble for Ramaria as her fingers refused to respond with the agility she was expecting, the latches taking several seconds each to undo. With a triumphant (and somewhat throaty) giggle, the last latch came undone and she opened the lid.

I watched her face rather than look at that content of the case. Interest, recognition, confusion, then disbelief washed over her alcohol relaxed features.

"You're an archer?!" Her voice had risen a few decibels, and the excitement in her voice had almost managed to override her habitually gravelly voice. "That's fuckin' sweet!"

"No!" I replied, somewhat more vehemently than I should have. It took me a second to realize that she was talking about archer as a subset of people who could shoot bows, rather than my smug, future-shifted self, and in that time I'd already instinctively made steps to distance myself from the image of that man. I recovered quickly. "I mean, no, not really. I can shoot a bow a bit," a blatant lie - I was incredibly good with a bow, I just never used them, "but I'm certainly not an archer."

"Man, that's so cool," she enthused, probably talking about the bow itself rather than my informed ability to 'shoot a bow a bit'. She was probably right. I had all but ignored the aesthetics of the bow itself in favour of determining what the hell it meant to me and what I should do with it - but the dark colour scheme and the contrast of the even curves of the arms and jagged riser would have probably struck more than a few people as being 'cool'.

"Where did you get this?" I was asked, as the red-haired meltran's hands slowly inched towards the bow.

I paused for a second as I thought my way through my reply. In the end I decided for the usual Shirou reply - obscure the truth. "Got it from an old friend of mine who hadn't seen me in a while. He knew I used to be a bit of an archery fan so he got it for me when we caught up recently."

"Daaaaamn, he must be really rich. This looks like a sweet bit of kit."

"Yeah, it's not bad," I said nonchalantly, masking that actual value and ability of the bow as best I could. "But I don't shoot at all now, so it's a bit wasted on me."

Ramaria's hands stopped their oh-so-close exploration of the bow at roughly the same time I realized that I'd said possibly a bit too much.

"You don't shoot at all any more?" I was asked by the red haired meltran, who had somehow, for the umpteenth damn time tonight, jumped on possibly the least comfortable train of conversation.

"Nope," I replied quickly.

Please don't follow up any more.

"… Why?"

Alaya damn it all! By now the drunk meltran had completely retracted her hands and excited gaze from the bow, and was trying to find a comfortable position to sit up on my bed - and the constant movement was constantly setting off pain receptors in my rebuilt torso.

"Is it about the personal reason you were talking about earlier?" Ramaria continued through a yawn, trying to fill in the silence as I ran through a list of plausible (and not so plausible) lies that I could trot out.

I felt something crack inside me, and I could feel my smile slip, my mouth open and my right eyebrow rise as pure exasperation rose through me. This was unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable! Clearly I'd made a huge mistake by assuming that Ramaria would be too drunk to have much of a memory of tonight, or even be able to string two sentences together coherently.

"Are you reading my mind?" I asked quietly, when I regained motor control of my mouth.

"Ahaha, don't be silly," the drunk meltran laughed off, blinking away some tiredness in her eyes as she did so. Ramaria must have thought I was joking, but I was being completely serious. Well at least that confirmed for me that she wasn't some kind of transhuman, seeing as she found the idea of mind-reading implausible.

"So that just means you're really good at asking all the annoying questions that I don't want to answer then," I confirmed mostly for myself. "And making all the observations that piss me off."

"Mmm-hmm," she nodded earnestly in reply, and I sighed. "You still haven't answered my question," she not-so-helpfully pointed out to me after a quick pause.

I really didn't know what to say, and I still hadn't regained control of my face, which clearly broadcast that thought across to my meltran companion, who muffled a chuckle. I raised my eyebrow to shoot her an exasperated look in the vain hope that she'd shut up - an action which didn't have the intended affect. Deflating, I sighed yet again. "I honestly don't know what to tell you," I told her simply.

"The truth would be a good start," she chuckled in her distinctive voice, before giving me a great view of her tonsils as she yawned yet again. Wasn't it just good manners to cover your mouth when you did that? "Failing that, a damn good story."

There wasn't a huge amount I could do. I'd been outplayed by a drunk, plain and simple. Ever since she'd stumbled into my room she'd been needling me with the kind of accuracy I'd have expected out of Rin - always finding the right topic that would annoy me to death, or dragging throwaway lines of conversation back to bite me in the arse. All so she could get whatever information she wanted to sate her curiosity, consequences be damned. The amount of situations where my fiery dark haired lover had dragged the awful truth out of one of my many mishaps way back in pre-Space War One London through verbal abuse, whining and general obtuseness was staggering.

And boy, was I having a horrible feeling of _deja vu_ right now. In fact, if Ramaria was more domineering instead of laid back, this would have been exactly like arguing with Rin.

"There was a guy I used to know, a friend of a friend of mine," I began slowly. Well, that was one way to describe Archer, that's for sure. "Him and I had a lot in common - same hobbies, skills and abilities, that kind of thing."

"Sounds like you two must have hit it off then," she said, slowly sliding from an upright to horizontal position as she was talking.

"Not really," I replied slowly, feeling my way through the web of half-truths that I was weaving for her benefit. "About the only thing we didn't have in common was our world view, so we rubbed each other the wrong way very easily."

"That doesn't sound like you," the drunk meltran said with a large grin. "You get along with everyone Shirou!"

"Thanks," I replied with a self-depreciating grin. I knew it must have looked easy to Ramaria, who actually enjoyed the ability to easily get along with others, but in reality it was difficult to pull that off when you knew that after this mess with the Vajra was sorted out, you'd be leaving and most likely never crossing paths again. My life made it really easy to avoid getting attached to people, so it felt like a small accomplishment when other people thought I was friendly and outgoing - a great testament to my ability to act a part. "But everyone has to have someone to hate. This guy was that for me."

Ramaria nodded tiredly from down near my feet, where she had finally managed to mess up enough of my blankets to appear to be comfortable. Apparently she was impressed at my wisdom with regards to hating people.

"We, uh, I never really…" I trailed off, my thought processes stalling as they tried to convey why I didn't shoot any more (and by extension, use the bow) without making it sound completely obvious that I was hiding some of the truth, or without making myself sound completely stupid. Abruptly I realized that the best policy here might be just giving away more of the truth than I had initially planned to, so I went with that.

"We fought. Often. Mostly about the right way to do things." Things like how to deal with the fact that he'd been stuck in a never ending cycle of violence and cleanup work, and the definition of how to suck it up and deal with your shitty decisions. Also, how to save the world.

Suddenly I felt very hypocritical.

"And I decided that I would never become like him, that I'd never do things the way he would."

"And he was better at archery than you, so you decided to quit?" The red haired meltran currently lazing all over my bed with no regard to private space looked incredibly pleased at her leap of logic.

"Close," I replied. "Archery was the one thing that I always felt belonged to him more than myself," no doubt due to his summoned class rather than any perceived difference in ability, "so I stopped shooting so I wouldn't become even more like him."

It wasn't entirely true, but it was a close enough approximation. Another rather telling factor as to why I stopped shooting was because in the absence of a bow capable of launching broken phantasms I got far more out of simply Tracing weapons in combat. Of course, now that I _was_ in possession of such a bow, that reason was kind of moot - which did mean my only reason now for not taking up the bow was very definitely an image problem.

Huh. I'm sounding rather petty, even to myself.

"Well that sounds fucking stupid," Ramaria confirmed for me, her tired voice rising in pitch somewhat as if to imply she didn't expect me to be 'that fucking stupid'. "Do you still talk to this guy?"

"Well, no."

"Then why do you bother worrying about being like him? For all you know he could spend all his time high as a kite these days and you'd never know."

I snorted at that response, firstly due to the involuntary mental image of the Heroic Spirit EMIYA chilling around on some beanbags in a fog of smoke, and secondly due to how Ramaria managed to completely miss the point.

"I don't care at all what he thinks about me now," I responded, somehow managing to avoid chuckling my way through the sentence. Any chance I had of keeping my emotions checked in this conversation were now officially out the door. Great work Shirou, way to keep that iron resolve going. "But that's not the point. The point is that I personally don't want to become like that guy."

Ramaria raised an eyebrow and brought a spare hand to her chin, trying (and failing) to look thoughtful. "Riiiight," she began slowly, "but there must be a lot more people out there who practice archery, and _aren't_ colossal dickheads. Why get hung up on it about one guy?"

I thought about what she said. I really did. I wanted to find an issue with what she'd just said. But I couldn't logically see a problem with her argument. I looked down at the bow again, as if seeing it really for the first time. Would I really be more like Archer if I simply began using a bow again? There wasn't a logical reason that set that possibility in stone, provided I chose to believe in writing my own destiny as opposed to believing in predetermination - which was essentially why Archer and I had tried to kill each other five decades ago.

There was a wonderfully thought provoking secondary line of thought to follow here - _why the hell _had it taken a conversation with an overbearing, drunk and extremely nosy meltran during the wee hours of the morning to realize that fact.

Something I could deal with later, I figured.

"Because I'm obviously stupid," I conceded with a sigh, finally getting around to answering Ramaria's question. I slowly opened one of my circuits, drawing odo from it and almost subconsciously feeding it through to my hands. There was no reason why I shouldn't be able to add this bow to my armory. I _would not _become Archer by picking up his weapon. I _would_ gain a powerful new tool with which to work with.

I glanced up to Ramaria, who was by now half asleep on the bed near my feet, but her eyes fluttered open as I moved my right hand down towards the bow. I shifted my gaze back to the weapon, slowly letting my odo charged hand rest lightly on the riser of the bow. Odo flowed out of my body and into the weapon, analyzing the composition of each and every square centimeter of the bow… Oh. Oh wow. This bow, this construction… was truly perfection.

This thing was made from almost pure carbon. Carbon composites were fairly common materials for modern bows, but pure carbon was not. Instead of coming from a mixture with other elements, the strength of this bow came from the arrangement of the carbon. Interlocking strands of nanotube material that were periodically laced into a spherical type of carbon structure (somewhat like C60, I thought - but modified in such a way that the thinner nanotubes had bonding points on the spherical structures). The attachment of the nanotubes to the C60-like spheres provided a degree of flexibility (this bow would definitely not be the easiest bow to draw, but that was hardly a problem for me), while the nanotube structure enforced the high shear strength required to maintain the high force draw. I'd never seen anything exactly like this before, but I could easily appreciate how it worked – one of the advantages of the Structural Grasp magecraft.

"Whatcha doing?" Ramaria asked drowsily from the foot of my bed.

From her point of view, all she would be seeing was me, staring into space with my hand on the bow – looking downright weird probably, but thanks to the fact there was no external indication that I was feeding odo into the bow, nothing out of the ordinary.

"Just zoning out," I replied easily, and the drunk and almost asleep meltran took that with a smile.

My probe had almost completely finished the bow, and I was somewhat astonished to find that the vast majority of the nanotube-C60 mixtures were aligned along a central axis running up and down the bow, further increasing the resistance to breakage. I honestly had no idea how human technology could create the carbon structures used in the creation of this weapon, let alone align them along the same axis! This bow must have cost a mint to make, and no mistake. Truly this was a work of art, which made me wonder why I was too damn stubborn to realize that before.

With the Structural Grasp magecraft completed, the bow was now stored within my reality marble. I quickly turned my focus inwards, delving through the layers of my soul until I found a copy of the weapon I had just analyzed. As soon as I laid eyes on the bow I knew that it would require but a moment's notice to draw the replica from my soul and overlay it into the real world.

"You know," I quietly told the meltran dozing at the foot of my bed, "you're a lot smarter than you look."

I don't entirely know what prompted me to say that, but for some reason, and despite my initial misgivings about doing so, talking to Ramaria tonight really helped me get a clear grasp on some of the problems that I'd been worried about recently, and also given me a few more to think about. I guess I just wanted her to know that.

"And if you need any help, you can come to me about it," I finished up, gentling closing the bow case and shifting it to the floor.

"I _do_ have a problem you can help with," Ramaria replied tiredly, stretching as she spoke, the jostling of the bed causing me to wince slightly in pain.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I haven't gotten laid in over a month." A lecherous grin spread across Ramaria's face as she spoke.

"What." Poker face engaged.

"It's a problem," she whined quietly.

"What."

"That you can fix."

"What."

"Come on Shirou," she complained, rising up into a sitting position. "I didn't come all the way to your room at three in the morning and have a deep and meaningful with you just because I felt like it you know."

Suddenly the tower of respect that the young meltran had just built for herself came crashing down. Hell, my own tower of self-respect was rocking _hard._ I had begun to think of Ramaria as surprisingly smart and empathetic after this little talk, even when absolutely hammered - and the fact that she was only trying to get into my pants made me wonder exactly when my (usually infallibly correct) ability to read people had crashed and burned.

"Ramaria," I began flatly, "you're shitfaced drunk and about to pass out. Besides, why didn't you just pick up someone when you were out drinking? Seems a bit easier and likely to succeed than waking me up at 3am for a chat."

Hell, from what I'd gathered, half the single men on base wouldn't have minded what she was trying to talk me into doing, and I'm sure more than a few of them were out drinking with her. So why me?

"I like you. Like _really_ like you. Sure, everyone else who comes drinking is fun to hang out with, but if I wanted to go there, I already would have," she replied tiredly, as she crawled slowly up the bed towards me.

Ouch. Those poor guys. I gave them a moment's silence before turning my mind back to the task of somehow convincing Ramaria that she really, really, reeeeeally didn't want to sleep with me. The silly girl was definitely drunk and spouting crap - if she, well, _really_ liked me, I was sure I would have noticed by now, so I was pretty sure she was just making it up on the fly. So all I had to do was convince her she was drunk and didn't mean what she was saying.

So I told her that verbatim.

Ramaria managed to shoot me a quizzical look through her tired eyes. "You really are as dense as Klan reckons aren't you?"

"What?" I asked, my tone hardening slightly. I was _not_ dense.

"Going partying, me showing you through Island-Three during my downtime, me coming to find out more about you at three in the morning? These ringing any bells Shirou?"

Oh. Right. Well maybe I might have missed one or two signals she was trying to send. Regardless, I kept myself under control and managed to shoot out a carefully constructed blank face.

"Holy shit," Ramaria, who had been on the verge of passing out from tiredness, suddenly managed to perk up in exasperation. "I kinda felt bad for trying to get a one-up on Nene, but I don't feel so bad about that now. Now I feel bad because I bet you completely missed everything she was doing to get you to notice her too - and she was being considerably less subtle about it than I was."

"What."

Seriously! What in the name of Alaya was going on here? I mean, sure, Klan always gave Nene crap, and kept joking that I was trying to drive a wedge in her squadron, but…

Oh. Now that I thought about it, Nene always had an ever-present blush on her face when dealing with me, which I had put down to her simply being a shy person in general. But I could recall several times where it had gotten worse, usually when Klan was teasing the pair of us. And she was all too eager to spend time sparring with me…

I slowly raised an eyebrow at the red haired meltran who had finally managed to pull herself up alongside me. I was thankful for her slow progress on two fronts - it gave me more time to think, and the less movement on the bed, the less I pain I was put in due to my freshly regenerated flesh.

"So you gonna give in already?" Ramaria asked me with a yawn. I could tell she was far beyond dead tired now, and if for at least no other reason than the fact she'd be asleep within a minute or so, I knew I'd managed to dodge a real bullet.

"Nope," I told her bluntly.

"Well too bad," I was told sleepily, as she lazily threw her arms over me. I attempted to sneak out of the way, but the sudden movement sent spikes of pain through my torso, and in the end it was easier to capitulate as the snoring woman fell asleep.

* * *

_Author's notes:_

First of all, big thanks to Vandenbz for proofreading this chapter for me. I do apologize for some of your changes not making it in – the difference between Australian and American English, where I'm certain of the difference :p

Well, we all knew that canon Shirou tends to be a bit dense at times, so I suppose it's nice to know he's got friends willing to spell it out for him, even if they are drunk, undersexed meltrans! As far as I was concerned, Shirou was always going to end up using the bow, but I knew his mindset had to change a little bit and that he had to be willing to accept the fact that even though his circumstances are similar to Archer's, he is not the person Archer was. Sorry for dragging you guys through bits of wangst while that got sorted out!

Also coming into the scene personally in this chapter is Brera, who was obviously more than a bit surprised at Shirou's ability to shrug off apparently mortal wounds. As one of the few people in the Macross universe who is probably capable of going toe to toe with Shirou for even a little bit, on foot and in variable fighter, expect him to just keep coming back like a good villain. Maybe even a bit more prepared next time, who knows.


	13. Mischievous Misdirection

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 13: Mischievous Misdirection.

* * *

Fortunately, when I woke up the following morning, I had full, if not entirely painless, mobility in my torso. That was a fairly good indication that my healing had completely taken (at least functionally) after the absolute trashing I'd taken in my fight last night.

I found the freedom of movement fairly handy, as it allowed me to extricate myself from the pile of limbs called Ramaria that had attached itself to me late in the night. Which was more than a mission than I initially had expected - the meltran was entirely dead to any stimulus, which made moving her around more similar to shifting a massive sack of rice than a human-like being. The fact that I was constantly setting off jolts of pain in my abdomen with every movement didn't help my mood either. Eventually I managed to heave her dead weight off me in a way that didn't throw her bodily to the floor (although I still wasn't _entirely_ convinced she didn't deserve that) and got out of bed, quickly dressing as I did so.

Despite the fact absolutely nothing physical had happened last night, I felt an odd surge of self-consciousness as I pulled my undergarments on, and put it down to the fact that the last time I woke up naked in a bed with a girl was pre-Space War 1. Sure, I'd seen plenty of naked people between now and then, but never in what could remotely be considered an intimate setting. Some old habits die harder than others I guess.

I quickly glanced at the clock and noticed that it was reading six thirty, give or take a minute or two - I was up positively late this morning. Grumbling quietly, I gave my room a once over, quickly grabbing the bow case that had been left on the floor and stacking it upright in the corner. The only other thing that needed my attention was the laundry on the floor, and the bloody mess of rags in my laundry hamper. I quickly gathered them all up and scooted out the door, leaving Ramaria snoring rather noisily on my bed. Thankfully no-one was in the corridor, so I headed off in the direction of the laundry room to get my clothes cleaned, banishing the dull aches my body was insisting on reminding me about.

It didn't take long to set up the wash cycle, and I quickly made my way to the mess hall, running into Ozma along the way, whose typically gruff angular features were slightly out of focus. We silently fell into step, and I couldn't help but notice the occasional twitch in his right hand as we made our way down the corridor.

"Paperwork?" I guessed, my tone rising slightly out of curiosity.

"Paperwork," the greying veteran grunted in confirmation. It was no secret that Ozma wasn't the best person behind a keyboard, and given his friction with our new NUNS liaison Catherine Glass, it seemed that the Squadron Commander was becoming more and more frustrated with the less exciting aspects of his job.

"How's that going anyway?" As if I couldn't tell.

"Ab-so-lute-ly wonderful," he grumpily snapped back. "Our new N.U.N.S. oversight has me busting my balls day in and day out for her superiors. Never mind that all she's doing is asking me to rewrite my reports over and over again, because, and I quote, 'a monkey could write better than this'. It's bullshit!"

With that, Ozma forcefully punched a metal bulkhead in frustration, realising too late that in the collision of flesh with metal, metal would win every time. I idly wondered if he realised that if he'd have spent a bit of time making those reports presentable in the first place, he wouldn't be up all night rewriting them. Knowing Ozma, it probably had, but he just wanted to be obtuse to rile up Catherine.

We quickly finished our walk to the mess hall, Ozma nursing a bruised hand and myself hiding the dull ache that my healing process had left me with. It didn't take long to spot the rest of our squadron sitting down to breakfast, along with the afro'd helmsman of our flagship, Bobby. They nodded politely at us as we walked in and I took a quick moment to determine the atmosphere around that little group. Bobby was listening very intently to something Mikhail was talking about, with a slight grin on his face. Saotome and Luca were hanging back, only tangentially involved - Luca looked slightly amused, while the raised eyebrow and emotionless face Saotome was wearing indicated he wasn't all that impressed with the story.

"And, I kid you not, she just leaped from the roof of the building!" Ozma and I had by then filled our trays with a bowl of nondescript cereal and moved over to join them, seemingly at the climax of Mikhail's story.

Bobby's expression went from mildly amused to absolutely mortified in the blink of an eye. "You said the locks weren't engaged?" he asked the blonde storyteller breathlessly.

"Sure weren't. Sheryl managed to finally catch her panties, but she plummeted like a brick," Mikhail continued, waving his hands in a downward motion for emphasis.

I raised an eyebrow as we approached the table.

"Sounds like we missed one hell of a story," I mentioned as Ozma and I sat down.

"You don't know the half of it," grumbled Saotome, in a tone of voice which immediately lead me to believe that he was somehow involved in whatever happened.

"Don't worry, I don't mind retelling this story," Mikhail told us all with the kind of grin characteristic of those willing to stir the metaphorical pot a bit.

"And Sheryl?" Bobby asked, still looking terrifyingly worried. I could kind of see where he was coming from - falling out of an EX-gear from a roof somewhere could be pretty painful, if not outright fatal - but if the galactic fairy had managed to stub her toe, it'd be all over the news, let alone something as dramatic as hitting the ground out of an unlocked EX-gear.

"Eh, she was fine," Mikhail told us casually. "Princess Alto here swooped in to save the day, and took off into the sunset, carrying a rather flustered looking galactic fairy with him."

Ozma grunted, an act which could have been indicative of amusement. "Literally or figuratively?"

The question was directed at Mikhail, but our resident pretty boy just looked at Saotome who, predictably, looked like he was about to blow his lid. "Literally," he mumbled, looking for all the world like he was ready to strangle Mikhail.

"Took you half an hour to get back to the clubroom, didn't it Alto-sempai?" Luca supplied, further feeding fuel to the fire, and causing the rest of the us to burst out in laughter as Saotome's face flushed a deep red.

As Mikhail recounted the beginning of the story for Ozma and myself, I began to wonder if perhaps as a squadron we were constantly giving Saotome perhaps a _bit_ too much flak. As the story progressed, and Ozma and myself found out about exactly how Sheryl had invaded their school and lost her underwear, I dismissed that thought.

Hey, I can't help it if the kid manages to get himself into these absolutely hilarious situations. May as well make something of it.

* * *

Breakfast finished quickly, with the only other thing of note being that Luca mentioned he'd gotten permission to share the details of the L.A.I. developed prototype fold communication guidance system, and would hand out the details to interested members of the Pixie and Skull squadrons later in the week. Only Ozma and myself took him up on the offer, and I offered to pass on the information to the Pixies seeing as Ozma was expected to be stuck in the office fairly often during the week fixing his reports.

My schedule for the day was looking remarkably boring, as I expected it would for the next week while my VF-25 was replaced. Training in the simulators in the morning, a quick training session in the dojo with Nene during our lunch break, more simulator work until 15:00, then I'd offer my services to Robbs until the mechanics finished their work a bit later.

After that I was off duty, which at this current point in time I was planning to use by going over all the information I had on Sheryl's personal staff _again_, in the hopes of figuring out who set me up the last night. I had a score to settle, and I needed to determine to what extent my mysterious ambusher (or his backers) knew about the Vajra and their connection to Sheryl's earrings.

So all in all, I expected a fairly straightforward, if boring day.

* * *

What I hadn't counted on though, was the combination of Ramaria's big mouth, big ego, and love of all things mischievous.

* * *

"What's up with you today?" I asked, as I recovered from a thrust and disengaged from my training partner.

I'd been sparring with Nene in the dojo for about fifteen minutes, and although it wasn't exactly easy to spot, I was able to tell that her concentration was lapsing on occasion. They weren't big mistakes, just a hair too much power on a strike, or a touch too slow on a parry (which shouldn't have been caused by stamina issues – we were still in the warm up and not going too hard yet), but they _were_ there. Considering I'd never seen her make any mental mistakes at all while swinging a shinai, the five or so she'd made in as many minutes had me worried that something serious had happened.

The pink haired meltran gave me a guilty glance, not quite meeting my eyes in the process.

"Nothing," she mumbled.

"If you say so," I told her, shrugging. I didn't believe her at all, and made no effort to hide the fact that I thought so with my reply. Her shoulders slouched for a second before she stepped up to engage me again, and with an arm rattling clatter, my shinai met hers. I conceded ground as the pink haired meltran pressed her attack, following up her initial overhead blow with a feint at my head followed by a controlled strike at my torso. I easily weaved away from the feint, but there was a millisecond of hesitation in the follow up strike, which I took advantage of by stepping into her guard, bracketing her shinai away from my body with my own and using my momentum to throw my shoulder into her chest. It was a slightly more painful manoeuvre than I'd have thought it would have been; no doubt due to my lingering stiffness and pain from last night.

Regardless of my pain, the result of the shoulder charge was as I'd expected – Nene let out a pained gasp as the impact forcibly evacuated her lungs and threw her off her feet. The pink haired meltran landed unceremoniously on her posterior, and spent the next minute or so trying to get air back into her winded body.

"That wasn't like you at all," I noted, perhaps somewhat gruffly once she'd finished huffing. "You shouldn't be making that kind of mistake."

In the back of my mind, I was well aware of what Ramaria had told me in her drunken state last night – that Nene was romantically interested in me. I did wonder at the start of our session if that was going to be a problem, but realised that even though that was news to me, her feelings couldn't have sprung up out of no-where overnight – which in turn meant that we'd been training while she was labouring under false hopes for a while. Given that she hadn't been acting like this before, I had figured it still wouldn't be an issue. And given that she hadn't brought it up, I certainly wasn't going to.

Nene rose off the floor, mumbling something I didn't quite hear as she did so. Possibly as a result of where my mind had just been, I had actually found myself eyeing the curve of her hips and the gracefulness in her movements as she rose rather than paying attention to what she was saying.

"Pardon?" I found myself saying, bringing my eyes back to her face. Suddenly I wondered if it was getting hot in here, or if I somehow felt embarrassed.

The slight furrowing of pink eyebrows and the crooked set of her mouth indicated that she was worried about something, which was confirmed when I met her purple eyes for a split second before she found an interesting piece of the mat to stare at. Hell, if I didn't know any better, I'd say she was about to burst into tears.

"Nothing," she replied in a quivering voice, and I forced down a spike of exasperation in my system. This lady was a horrible liar!

I brought my shinai back up into a guard position, but the pink haired meltran stood motionless for a few more seconds before issuing a wobbling sigh. This was definitely not what I was used to seeing from Nene in the dojo, and it was making me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"Maybe I'd better stop for today," the young meltran quietly conceded, directing her words to the floor.

"Alright," I replied simply, squaring my shoulders and striding towards the change rooms as I spoke, using the movement to cover my face – for some reason I was feeling a bit awkward all of a sudden. Sometimes people have their own reasons for being out of it (not myself of course – zoning out in a fight is a good way to die, so I made sure that I never let my circumstances interfere with my concentration) that they just have to get over. With any luck she'd be over this funk by tomorrow and we could return to our regular training sessions.

"Hey Shirou," Nene's voice began from over my shoulder.

"Hrmm?"

"Did you really... never mind." She sounded hesitant to begin with, so I guess whatever she wanted to ask probably wasn't that important.

Wonder what that was about.

* * *

With my afternoon session in the simulators over and done with, and having divested myself of my EX-gear, the next port of call was the other side of the hangar to try and find my chief mechanic, Robbs. The frame for my new VF-25 was still a week away, but there were various things keeping my ground crew busy, such as helping the other teams with their repairs. There had been plenty of damage spread around in our last action as a result of SMS being the unfortunate suckers who were first in and last out, so a lot of maintenance teams were pulling double shifts to get the majority of our squadrons back up to combat readiness as soon as possible. There was also the procurement of new arms and armour plating for my VF-25, which weren't provided with the new frame by L.A.I. - as part of the contract to field test the new units, they'd already provided us with a generous store of spare parts, but as with all company property, the proper paperwork had to be filed with the quartermasters department before we could grab them. On the flip side, by getting the weapons and armour plating sorted out now, we would have ample time to check them before installing them on my new bird.

The simple act of wandering through the hangar got me a surprising number of... interesting looks from the ground crew. I was used to being greeted by the rather chatty members of our maintenance teams, but today I got several overlyexaggerated hellos and a rather unusual interest in how my day had been so far, at least from a few people. Others were considerably distressed when I greeted them, others were uncharacteristically quiet, and yet others gave me hostile stares.

I'd honestly never received such a weird reception to the hangar in my time at SMS - something was definitely strange around here today, and that set me on edge. There were a number of reasons why a single person wouldn't be acting normally, ranging from a simple cold (highly likely) and running all the way up to mental domination by an alien generated galaxy spanning fold network device (so far out the far end of unlikely that I'm surprised I had the creativity to come up with something like that).

What got me really worried was the apparent spread of this unusual behaviour. Not everyone had the same symptoms, so it was unlikely that some form of virus or infection was spreading through the ground crew. This in turn lead me to the possibility that there was some form of supernatural mind control going on here. Now, the only form of widespread mind control I had dealt with had been while destroying some of the few remaining Dead Apostles – so I felt slightly justified in opening a few of my magic circuits and curling my hands around the hilts of weapons that didn't quite exist yet.

I found Robbs directing a rack of missiles to it's intended location, and silently thanked Alaya for the fact that I hadn't been jumped by a horde of ravenous ghouls made out of SMS crew members in the process.

"Well, if it isn't the man of the hour," Robbs greeted me, his grin almost verging on a leer.

"I am?" I asked him cautiously, trying to both meet his eyes and surreptitiously look left and right at the same time. It wasn't easy, but it was a damn sight better than becoming ghoul bait.

"Sure are," he replied, before flashing a glance over my shoulder and frowning in response to what he'd seen. I tensed my muscles slightly and drew in on myself for a second, taking the blueprints of Kanshou and Bakuya from the wasteland of my soul, certain that now was the moment the ghouls had been waiting for.

"THAT'S NOT HOW YOU STORE THE LASER CAPACITORS YOU DEADBEAT!" Robbs roared past my ear at some offending crew member behind me, and I stopped myself just short of Tracing the weapons into my waiting fists. I turned, feigning a casualness that I certainly did not feel at the moment, to confirm that one of the newer members of my ground crew had in fact stacked a capacitor brick against the wall rather than in the storage rack. Rather than, for example, reverting into a mindless undead beast that wanted to introduce my internal organs to the outside air.

"What have I done now?" I questioned my chief mechanic, relaxing slightly as I did so.

"It's not what you've done, it's _who_ you've done," I was told, as that too damn wide grin returned to his face.

For a brief second I felt nothing but shock as the implications of his words registered with my brain. Wide eyed I stared back at Robbs, all thoughts of Dead Apostles and ghouls forgotten. The man in question rumbled out a deep chuckle as I regained control of my mouth.

"_Who_ I'vedone." I repeated his statement, briefly too stunned to voice the stinking, great, obvious conclusion that I'd just leapt to.

"Yeah, Ramaria's been telling everyone that the two of you slept together last night," Robbs confirmed my guess for me, obviously enjoying the fact that this was the first I'd heard of this far too much.

"That little meltran rat," I spat without much feeling, bringing my face back under some semblance of control as I did so. The irony of me calling a meltran_ little_ was not lost on me, but Alaya dammit if that wasn't exactly how I felt about her right now.

"What, you expected to keep it secret?"

Robbs gave me a sly glance that spoke volumes about Ramaria's inability to keep her mouth shut about anything, and his opinion on my judgement in trusting her with a secret.

"No, that's not it," I said with a resigned sigh. After a pause for thought I continued, still feeling slightly put out. "I suppose that's why half the ground crew seemed to want to high-five me, and the other half seemed wanted to fight me."

"Definitely," Robbs chuckled. "You broke a few hearts today, and also lost a few people some bets," I rolled my eyes – soldiers will be soldiers, and I found myself not at all surprised that someone had a pool going for who would be the first (or more likely, _next_) to sleep with Ramaria. "But if you aren't worried about this being a secret, why are you so miffed about it?" Robbs asked, curiosity creeping into his amused tone.

I allowed myself to relax and closed my thrumming circuits. What a wonderful insight into my psyche this little episode provided – people start acting weird and suddenly I'm convinced it's Dead Apostles all over the convoy. If I wasn't in my line of work, I'd be more than a little worried that I might be mad. Oh well.

"Ramaria said she slept with me, yeah?" I asked, as I brought myself back to Robbs' question.

"Yeah, and?"

"Did she say anything explicit about getting laid?" I continued, directing my crew chief's train of thought along the rails I was providing.

Robbs brought a hand up to scratch the beginnings of a new beard and rolled his eyes thoughtfully skywards for a good five seconds as he dredged his memory.

"Noooo," he rolled off his tongue uncertainly. "No, no she didn't," he concluded a bit more firmly. I saw his eyes light up as he made the connection between what he'd been told and what he'd implied. "Wait, you mean..." he left his sentence hanging, looking at me in surprise.

"Yeah," I replied ruefully.

"But, then she..."

"Yeah," I replied in the same tone of voice.

"And then you..."

"Yep."

"Holy shit Shirou, you have been _played!_" Robbs exploded in laughter, and for a few seconds my only response was to drop my face into my right hand as Robbs worked through the laughter in his system.

"Played by a meltran rat armed with nothing but the truth. We _did_ sleep together last night, but not in the sense that she's been implying," I confirmed for him, feeling more than a bit put out by this turn of events.

And with a sudden flash of insight, I realised what was wrong with Nene in the dojo – of course she'd be suitably upset if she liked me and Ramaria told her that we'd slept together. Nene being Nene meant that she would be far too embarrassed to ask about it as well, which meant that of course I couldn't clear up that misconception.

"Well," Robbs began in a curious tone of voice, "what actually happened then?"

I shrugged. Getting the truth out now wouldn't really have much effect on the rumour that Ramaria was no doubt spreading through the Quarter as fast as she could, but it would be important for people I was in a serious working relationship with to know the truth about the issue.

"This is Ramaria we're talking about. Would it surprise you if I said she was drunk, and thought coming to my room for a chat at three in the morning was a good idea?"

"Not really," my chief mechanic replied with a knowing grin. I think he could figure out where this was going.

"And that she passed out on my bed rather than buggering off when asked politely?"

"Sounds like Ramaria," Robbs said with a knowing nod.

"Well that the long and short of it really," I said, shaking my head and feeling a bit sorry for myself. "Anyways, moving on from this wonderful topic, what have you got for me to do?"

* * *

After spending an hour and a half testing the integrity of the freshly installed armour on Saotome's bird using the tried and tested method of percussive maintenance (and just a little bit of Structural Grasp magecraft), while copping a boatload of flak for my so-called conquest last night, I was well and truly looking forwards to getting out of the hangar. Not a feeling I was particularly used to – normally I enjoyed the hands-on work and chances I got to fawn over how well designed the VF-25 was. But today – just today - I felt justified in wanting a break after dealing with the crap that had been heaped upon me.

Crap like what happened at the dojo at lunch. Now I could put a reason to Nene's behaviour, and now that I knew she was interested in me as more than a friend, which was not something I had bothered to worry about since, well, the Holy Grail war, I supposed I'd have to do something to convince her that chasing me wouldn't be in her best interests.

Well, maybe later. There wasn't a huge rush, and I'd need to think up some way to let her down gently. Her _and_ Ramaria, come to think of it. And as I thought of it, I felt blood rise to my face. Currently I was making my way towards the recreation room for a quick break before dinner, which meant for the first time today I could actually let my thoughts wander. Which they did, reminding me of Ramaria's little confession last night. Sure, I had it idling in the back of my mind all day, but apart from that brief chat with Robbs I didn't really have the free time to think about it.

If I was being perfectly honest with myself, I just didn't know how to deal with it. It wasn't that I didn't get the occasional confession of undying love from clueless ladies since Space War One. As a fourteen year dead comrade of mine once told me when I complained to him about it; you're a hero, it's a feature of the class, not a bug. The fact was, I could simply tell them that I didn't like them in the way they hoped (which I certainly didn't), and then more likely than not I'd be shifted onto a new assignment not long after, which made it easy to get away.

The problem was that I was better friends with these meltrans than I usually was with the people who thought they'd fallen in love with my carefully prepared fake personality. Somehow being at SMS had drawn me further out of what I thought of as my 'public' personality, the untouchable grumpy old veteran act I'd perfected over many decades, and changed it into something different. Something a bit more open, a bit more like how I wanted myself to feel and act. Maybe I was slowly beginning to climb out of that slippery slope that I'd fallen into when Rin died. Definitely not enough to return the affections of my meltran friends, but enough to make me worry about how they'd take my inevitable rejection.

I felt my face involuntarily curling into a frown. Sweet Alaya. Listen to yourself Shirou! Since when could you afford the luxury of worrying about what people are going to think of you. Who knows when you'll have to pack up and shuffle on to the next job?

It was then I rounded the corner into the rec room, finding Bobby behind the bar, as per usual for this time of the day, with a smattering of crew around. Unfortunately for me, a smattering of the crew also included a trio of meltrans – one that looked far too short to be taken seriously, one with a face almost as pink as her hair, and one leaning over the table with a broad grin on her face, nursing a beer in one hand.

Fortunately for me, that one had her back to me, allowing me to walk right up to the table without her noticing. As I approached the table from behind, careful not to make any sound to give my approach away to Ramaria, I was able to pick up the story she was regaling her squadmates with.

"It was incredible," she said, and even though I couldn't see her face, it wasn't hard to imagine the dirty great grin she'd be wearing. By now Klan and Nene had noticed me approaching the table, and while I was worried that Ramaria might wonder what had momentarily grabbed their interest and turn around, she didn't. Perhaps she was used to her fellow Pixies zoning out when she was telling stories? Regardless, I conspiratorially brought my index finger up to my lips to indicate silence, which prompted a cheeky little grin from Klan and a sullen grimace from Nene.

"We were at it all night long," Ramaria continued with a rocky laugh, oblivious to my presence.

At least until I dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder.

"For someone who was at it all night long, you did a remarkably good job of passing out drunk after twenty minutes," I told the meltran, who flinched slightly at the sound of my voice.

"Oh… busted huh?" replied Ramaria with a disappointed sigh.

"Busted," I confirmed for her. "But well done anyway. I think the whole damn ship is going to be talking about it for weeks, even if you stop now."

By now I had slid down into the seat next to Ramaria, who was maybe looking a little apologetic. Or maybe disappointed. Or maybe guilty. It was hard to judge, especially seeing as she didn't meet my eyes when I gave her a sideways glance.

Definitely something I wasn't used to seeing on the red-haired meltran's face.

"Busted?" Klan queried from across the table. "What do you two lovebirds mean by that?"

I turned to look again at Ramaria, and that almost melancholic expression quickly disappeared into a bright grin, possibly before anyone else at the table noticed.

"I think you can field this one Ramaria," I said, wanting to put her on the spot. She dug herself into this hole, and as far as I was concerned, she could damn well dig herself out. And if she learnt a lesson in humility, then all the better.

"Weeell…" she drawled, "we didn't really actually do the nasty. I might have… implied… more than I should have." This was all delivered with the same damn grin I was used to seeing on her face when she was telling a story - so much for that lesson in humility. Then again, this was Ramaria we were talking about, the meltran with a serious inability to read between the lines. Maybe she just thought that the actual story was no less funny than her trumped up version of events, and there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

Having talked to her last night though, and from that weird little melancholic expression she quickly wiped off her face earlier, I was beginning to think that maybe there was something worrying underneath her usual upbeat demeanour. I just wasn't sure anymore.

Ramaria's confession brought mixed reactions from the pair of meltrans sitting across from us. Nene's sullen look quickly morphed as blood rushed to her cheeks, her eyebrows rose and she reflexively brought her hand to her mouth - she was clearly surprised. Her smaller 'onee-sama' on the other hand quickly bought into what she perceived to be the hilarity of the situation, issuing an impressively deep chuckle for someone of her stature.

"Busted indeed," said the Pixie leader. "But you still woke up in his bed anyway? How do you know Shirou didn't do anything funny while you were sleeping?"

The question was directed at Ramaria, who simply raised an eyebrow questioningly at me. I shot Klan a faked look of exasperation, and noticed that Nene's face was all but glowing with embarrassment now.

"As I recall, I was far more interested in getting you to bugger off and let me sleep than I was in letting you pass out drunk on my bed," I said dryly. I deliberately didn't reveal anything about what we actually got up to last night, as that was far too personal for me to say anything about. Ramaria mightn't think the same however, so I thought I'd better give her a gentle reminder before her mouth got away from her. "And you'll notice that I didn't report you for abusing the master security key," I said with a wry grin, hoping that she'd get the message.

"Oh yeah, that _is_ true," the red haired meltran mused, entirely honestly as far as I could tell. At least she seemed to get the hint, as she brought her glass up to take a pull rather than continue speaking.

"S-so, you two definitely didn't, ah… uhm… well… you know?" Nene asked. I stifled a small chuckle as her attempts to find the words 'have sex' lead to her face becoming a darker and darker shade of embarrassment.

"Contrary to the conclusion I'm sure your mind jumped to, no," I told her straight, and she gave me an absolutely agonised look before dropping her head into her hands. Well that was odd. I thought she'd be relieved when the truth of Ramaria's bending of the facts was revealed.

"I'm so sorry," the tall, pink haired meltran moaned softly into her hands. "Today at the dojo… I was upset because I thought that…"

Right. She was mortified at _herself_. Technically not my problem.

I let Nene waffle through her apologies for what seemed to be a good five minutes or so, although it _had_ to have been a fair bit shorter. I didn't really mind that she was a bit out of it, having worked out the reason about ten minutes earlier, but if it made her feel better then I wasn't going to interrupt. Eventually the constant stream of apologies stopped, which prompted Klan to raise an eyebrow thoughtfully.

"Wait," she said slowly. "Does that mean you're_ still_ trying to turn my squadron against themselves with your roguish wiles Shirou?"

Ramaria chuckled, Nene started babbling again and I just groaned. This damn squadron.

* * *

The rest of my week passed somewhat uneventfully. True to his word, Luca came up with a bunch of specs for the prototype fold communication system that was installed, which I spent the better part of a night going over. The dates outlined in the development logs indicated that the project began almost three years before Frontier ran into any Vajra, so there was little chance that this system had been designed to counter the Vajra specifically. There was a once off reference to some material that L.A.I. had gotten their hands on called 'fold quartz', however, which was a substance I'd never heard of before. There was no mention of where it had come from or of any of its properties at all, yet apparently the acquisition of this sample was what prompted L.A.I. to begin their research into this new communication system. I'd resolved to obtain a sample of this fold quartz and asked Luca about it, but our liaison simply gave me a blank look and told me he had no idea where the sample had ended up.

Guess I'd have to go hunting around at some point.

Maintenance work and simulators kept me busy during the days, and there was a scouting mission that was undertaken by the rest of my squadron which resulted in Saotome and Mikhail coming to blows in the rec room. I'd missed that personally, but Ramaria told me all about it in great detail.

During the nights I was busy scouring the net for any information that could possibly link one of Sheryl's staff to the Vajra, or my new cybernetic white haired friend. I'd been over the data before and found nothing interesting, but now I was almost certain something suspicious was happening in that camp, so I decided to spend more time digging than I had on my first attempt. It was late in the week when I stumbled upon something interesting, in an academic journal of all places.

Nature Cosmos, volume 23, page 598 - _Management and Prevention of V-type Infection_. Buried in a two page long author list was the name 'O'Connor, G.' A quick search through the archives of Cosmos Nature revealed several other papers attached to the same name, all of which were regarding V-type infection research, and all of which also had the name 'Nome, M.' attached. Mao Nome was a high profile scientist in xenovirology who went down in the Vajra attack on the 117th Expedition Fleet. I also had the suspicion that the Clock Tower may have been interested in her for some reason before Space War 1 effectively wiped the organisation out - the name tickled the edge of my memory from some of Rin's school gossip.

I couldn't be one hundred percent sure that 'O'Connor, G.' was Sheryl's manager Grace either, despite the author database confirming the G did in fact stand for Grace. But it was a lead, especially considering the lack of any other information I was able to dig up on the woman - her profile was so empty that she was either the straightest person in the galaxy (which did actually fit with the couple of minutes or so of personal interaction I'd had with the woman) or it was entirely made up. If it was made up, it seemed to be a bit of a newbie job - I'd made the mistake of using the same name on consecutive profiles once, and also the mistake of having made use of too 'clean' a profile. Both of those times I had gotten detected by enemies, prompting a more… hasty… ending to those matters than I had planned.

Despite uncovering that new lead, it didn't get me any closer to determining the identity of my new cyborg friend, or how he managed to fit into the picture, or even how my tracker bug had been detected. For the rest of the week it remained that way, my constant delvings on the net turning up nothing else useful. Hardly surprising really, considering the skill it must have taken to detect the tracker I had planted, and my own relative skill with computers and electronics. I did have contacts that could possibly find the information I wanted electronically, but all of them were light years away and I didn't particularly want to drag anyone else into this where I could avoid it.

The time spent slaving over my terminal wasn't exactly conductive to being social, so I had a lot of time to spend with my own thoughts in the evenings. Invariably these would always end up pondering the little mess Ramaria had dumped me in with her drunken confession almost a week ago, and the fallout from that. The fallout, of course, being that nearly most of the crew thought Ramaria and myself were an official couple, with only a selected few (my squadron, the Pixies and most of my ground crew) knowing what really happened. The whole issue was making me feel decidedly uncomfortable around most of the crew - a recently recovered emotion that I kind of wish had stayed buried in my psyche. The whole thing was made worse due to the fact that I couldn't figure out exactly _what_ was making me feel that way. Was I feeling bad for Nene? Was I worried about what the rest of the crew thought? Was I worried about how I was going to let Ramaria and Nene down gently? Was it something else entirely?

It probably didn't help that since that night, I'd been _noticing_ both meltrans a lot more when I ran into them around the place. It wasn't that I was suddenly aware they were women, it was more like I was suddenly conscious of the fact, where I certainly hadn't been before.

It was making life more than a little difficult for me, if I were allowed to be brutally honest with myself. But seeing as I wasn't paid for that, I just shuffled those thoughts away when they came and tried getting on with my job.

* * *

At the end of the week Skull and Pixie squadrons ended up heading out on a survey and capture mission – apparently an area of space the convoy was heading past had been broadly identified as being the location of a Vajra nest, but it hadn't yet been pinpointed. I'd been sitting with mission control at the time, up on the bridge with the captain, Bobby and the operators, as basically the only person of those two squads incapable of joining in on the sortie. I was chatting to Bobby about the state of Mikhail and Saotome's current relationship when the squads hit the asteroid field they were supposed to be scouting and split off into pairs, barring Klan who took off on her own. As we weren't part of the command crew, Bobby and I continued chatting while Lam, Mina and Monica fed information to the captain.

After about half an hour of small talk, Klan finally reported a hit on her sensors – a derelict old wreck that immediately started spewing out small white Vajra drones onto our tac holos. Captain Wilder ordered the rest of the squads to Klan's location even as Klan engaged, and for a minute or two she was stalemated against the superior numbers of the Vajra swarm.

All in all it looked to be business as usual as I wandered over to keep an eye on the tactical holos when suddenly Klan swore up a storm. A swathe of contact icons had just been wiped from the holo in front of us, causing me to raise an eyebrow in Monica's general direction. She just gave me a shrug, before something caught her eye on her terminal.

"Identifying new contact," our radar operator told us quickly, bringing up the contact information on the holo. "Contact unknown," she concluded

"Klan, what is it?" Captain Wilder asked.

"Red variable fighter. Never seen the model before. Just wiped our a wing of smaller drones," the Pixie leader told us, her voice slightly distorted by the radio.

I stiffened, my thoughts immediately connecting an unknown red VF with Saotome and my run in with a similar sounding unit on the Vajra ship a couple of weeks ago.

"Oh shit!" Klan exclaimed vehemently down the comm channel, "He's turned on me..."

There was a metallic thunk and a pregnant pause before Klan's voice came back down the comm channel. "Engaging." There was a faint whistle as everyone barring myself let out a breath in relief.

We didn't have a camera feed over this distance, but the telemetry from the sensors mounted on Klan's Quaedluun Rea painted a very distinctly close ranged battle. I also noted that the Vajra had apparently withdrawn to their wrecked ship, possibly a result of having a wing of white drones cut down before they could blink.

"Captain," I interjected, "there's the possibility this is the same unit I described as having attacked us during the Battle of Frontier. If it is, the pilot is extremely skilled, and I suggest we warn Klan."

Captain Wilder spared me a quick glance before nodding and getting back to examining the tac holos. "Did you hear that Klan?" our captain asked down the line.

"Yeah," she grunted. "He's good alright. Where's the backup?"

I glanced at a broader-volume holo, noting that the combination of Mikhail and Saotome were rapidly closing in on the combat area, but were still a minute or two away from their maximum effective range.

"Coming," Captain Wilder told the Pixie leader, who sounded as though she wasn't enjoying herself in the slightest in that dogfight, and I couldn't blame her. If her opponent was actually my new friend in the red VF, I could understand why. He was _extremely_ skilled, and if his variable fighter was a new prototype from whatever colony, there was a good chance that it would be as comparable (if not better than) our VF-25's. Which in turn would well outclass a Queadluun, spec wise.

"Can't grab a break," we all heard Klan muttering after another minute or so of defensive combat, apparently being too occupied with staying alive to bother closing the comm channel. The dull thudding of cannon fire echoed down the channel as Klan tried to track her quarry, but the tac holos were painting a considerably more evasive picture for the Pixie leader. Lam tapped the wide-volume holo, pointing out the location of Saotome and Mikhail, who were fortunately only a few seconds away from engaging.

"Don't under-estimate me, you arsehole," Klan growled as the telemetry from her suit flashed up some minor damage to the armour plating on the arms. "Gotcha!" she crowed a second later.

Telemetry indicated a solid hit on the target with her back mounted Bifors anti-ship impact cannon - a ridiculously impressive feat considering how her opponent had been running rings around her for nearly the entirety of the fight. A sudden blizzard of telemetry from Klan's suit indicated how ineffective such a powerful shot proved to be on this unit however - within a second or two unexpected return fire from the somehow still functioning red VF cut down most of the armour plating on the front of her Queadluun-Rea's suit, disabling the voice comm, her main thrusters, half her weapons as well as popping a vacuum breach for good measure, although her protective suit was still sealed against the void.

It did leave her a sitting duck though, so a collective breath was released in the room as Saotome's tac marker swung in to engage before the opponent could capitalise on their advantage.

"Get us patched into their comm channel," Captain Wilder ordered sharply, causing Mina to start furiously poking at her haptic interface. All the while Saotome and the red VF were dancing a pretty dogfight, with Saotome distinctly on the defensive. It appeared Saotome wasn't going to waste any time however, quickly dropping half his micro-missiles onto the target when he first managed to get a lock. Given the beating the enemy should have taken from Klan, I wasn't all that surprised to discover that they had little effect, although the red unit did appear to be stunned by the assault. Locked in smoke perhaps?

Skull-Five's tac marker immediately charged forward towards the enemy, and the two beads of light merged on the tac holo, indicating some sort of collision.

It was at that point that Mina finally managed to get us hooked into the Skull squadron comm, a buzz of static heralding a transmission from Skull-Two.

"- a clean shot!" Mikhail warned Saotome, the thread of frustration in his voice much greater than I'd normally associate with the composed sniper.

"It's restrained!" Saotome roared back, clearly not in the mood for taking any crap. Understandable too, considering he was wrestling a VF while Mikhail was buggering around lining up a shot that we all knew was well within his capabilities. "Shoot!"

Mikhail roared incoherently as a yellow line connected his tactical marker with the merger of Saotome's and our red suited friend. For the third time in as many minutes, the command crew held their collective breath as we waited to find out the fate of Saotome.

New telemetry came in, indicating the red unit had broken off from Saotome and was fleeing the battle. That was good news - it seemed that Mikhail had managed to pull off what we all expected him to be able to pull off, and with the enemy retreating we could safely recover Klan's suit and get out of that region of space.

Suddenly the contact icon indicating the Vajra nest disappeared, preluding a fold jump by our retreating friend, and that was that.

* * *

The debriefing was fairly straightforward, although I did notice that the level of antagonism between Mikhail and Saotome had apparently dropped to record lows as indicated by Saotome's use of Michel when addressing the sniper, which would make working in this squad considerably easier. Saotome was smart enough to positively identify the red VF he had just taken on as being the same one that had assaulted us in the Vajra battleship a couple of weeks prior - apparently the kid was _finally_ starting to learn the kind of things you needed to keep an eye out for as a soldier. That didn't bring us any closer to actually _identifying_ the unit, despite Luca claiming he was bringing it up where he could at L.A.I.

Klan had been safely rescued, uninjured except for her pride, and it was confirmed that just before bolting our friend had used his beam rifle to completely destroy the Vajra nest, leaving us incapable of taking any live samples - something that would hinder scientific research into the Vajra in general, and on a more personal level, hinder my ability to determine the exact extent of their abilities with magecraft. So at least we could be sure this guy had an agenda with the Vajra, or at least an agenda that involved us not finding out more about the Vajra. Which was just as curious. As the briefing finished Ozma assured us that the identity of the red craft was being looked into, and seeing as it destroyed our original target, there wasn't much else to really be said.

As the day drew to a close I went for a stroll down towards the park in order to sort out some thoughts that had been bouncing around my head about the red variable fighter. I hadn't fought it in fighter mode while in open space, only in battloid mode while in a closed corridor – so the footage we obtained of the battle had definitely provided me with some food for thought. We had as much camera footage as we could grab out of Klan's damaged recorders and along with Saotome's and Mikhail's, so in order to view it all, I took my terminal for a walk.

It made for very interesting watching. The first thing that struck me were the unorthodox sharp turns, jinks and momentum arrestors that our red friend seemed to enjoy pulling off as part of his flight pattern. It wasn't that they weren't effective – entirely the opposite in fact, seeing as he fought Klan to a standstill. It was just for practicality that moves like those weren't implemented by the majority of variable fighter pilots. The G-forces associated with those manoeuvres were particularly high, and even if the unit had an I.S.C. unit equipped, I couldn't see how it wouldn't fill up after a minute or so of performing at that level, which would then have the effect of pasting the cockpit with pureed pilot the next time he tried another trick like that.

Suddenly something clicked in my brain – I had been naively assuming that because my opponent was a variable fighter it was _also_ piloted by a human. I _had_ seen moves like that before, way back in 2040.

The Sharon Apple incident.

Back then the control of the newly developed Ghost X-9 unmanned attack drone had been co-opted by a rogue artificial intelligence at the same time as it had hypnotised the entire population of Macross city and taken control of the dormant SDF-1's computer systems, with the aim of subjugating the world. I'd been called in at the last minute to take care of the X-9 drone that had effectively crippled the standing U.N. Spacey forces as well as completely wiping the floor with the VF-21 prototype that had folded in from Eden to help take care of it. The reason it managed to cut an incredible swathe through the best technology and pilots the Spacey could throw at it? The fact that it wasn't restrained by the need to protect a fragile human pilot from G-forces, allowing it ridiculously unsurpassed mobility (at the time). Of course, simple application of Reinforcement magecraft considerably levelled the playing field for myself, and despite the fact that I was flying an almost outdated VF-11 Thunderbolt at the time, without a human pilot it was almost comically easy to bring down. Eventually the Ghost X-9 was developed into the Ghost V-9, with software limiters coded into the system so that in the event of hostile system takeover, human controlled VF's would be able to bring them down.

The attack patterns of the red variable fighter were incredibly similar to that of the Ghost X-9. And where was it written that variable fighters had to be piloted by a human? Just because the Ghost X-9 couldn't transform, was that a reason to believe that an unmanned variable fighter couldn't be developed? Certainly not.

Such a machine would require resupply at some point, and given that the damn thing popped up a good light month or so away from where we last saw it, it would be safe to say that it managed that on the convoy somewhere. That would imply there would be some sort of mission control for the red variable fighter somewhere nearby. How a facility like that managed to go under the radar of the Frontier security forces, I have no idea, but people unfortunately don't go around calling military intelligence an oxymoron for no reason.

I could feel another train of thought beginning to gather speed in my mind before I pushed it onto a shunt line – I was passing a familiar looking bin, upon the lip of which was balanced a crumpled can of coffee, and my unconscious brain had thankfully triggered a reminder for me. The can was a sign from my contact in the government, indicating that the park bench a little further down should contain a little surprise for me. Sure enough, as I casually approached it I noticed a small scrap of paper wedged between the planks, a piece of paper I surreptitiously palmed as I sat down. Reading it could wait for later.

As could my thoughts about the red variable fighter apparently – whatever conclusion I was about to draw quickly fled to the far corners of my mind as I found myself thinking about Ramaria and her bloody drunken confession for what must have been the tenth time that day.

* * *

The next evening I found myself sitting on a park bench very similar to the one I'd fished the piece of paper out of. When I'd made it back to my room I wasn't particularly surprised to find out that all that was scrawled on it was a date, a time and a set of coordinates. I really wasn't under any compulsions to find out what my contact wanted me for, and I had given some thought to simply standing him up in order to work on the more pressing Vajra problem.

Having said that, this kind of relationship worked on the principle of give-and-take, not just take, take and more taking. He'd already given me the trackers, and the incredibly powerful bow that I'd only recently added to my arsenal. If I wanted (or more likely, _needed_) anything more out of him, it would pay to be in the black, favours-wise. It didn't hurt that unlike the kind of people I usually dealt with in the public service, this one would constantly soldier on, do the job he was given regardless of the crap heaped upon him, and was honest to boot. Sometimes guys like that needed a leg up and a friendly hand where they could get it – especially seeing as the outcome of lending a hand was generally in line with my goals anyway.

So out I came. This bench was buried a reasonable distance away from any of the major thoroughfares of the park, presumably in the interests of secrecy, and it didn't take long for two figures to show up.

On the left, in black glasses (in full defiance of the lack of ambient light in this area of the park) and wearing a dark overcoat was the agent who I'd met last time in the back alleys of King's Cross. I inclined my head politely at the agent, who quickly returned the gesture before continuing to scan the environment nearby. I'd already cased the area to make sure it was clear, but it wouldn't do to show him up at his job, so I didn't bother to say anything.

His partner was a grey haired man wearing a muted suit under a dark coat similar to the agent's. Well. That was a surprise – I was expecting him to be too busy to actually show up in person. Whatever he wanted me for, it must have been important.

"Howard," I said by way of greeting, eschewing the usual 'President Glass' that he probably got day in and day out as the public leader of the Frontier convoy, inclining my head again.

"Yuuya," he replied, using the name that he'd known me by when we first met slightly less than two decades ago. "The past twenty years seem to have treated you kindly," he noted, collapsing onto the bench as he spoke.

"You don't look too bad yourself," I replied, entirely untruthfully, and the young (relative to me, at any rate) man raised an eyebrow in some sort of lazy man's shrug. I eyed the grey haired man up and down – he responded by ignoring me in favour of bringing his hands up to his face and using his fingers to gently massage his temples and forehead.

For nearly a minute I left him there in silence with his eyes shut, while I killed the time by staring off into the mid-distance. Eventually Howard broke the silence by inhaling deeply.

"Sorry," he grumbled apologetically, removing his hands from his head as he did so. "Long day at the office."

I shrugged to imply that it was his problem for signing up for that kind of life in the first place, and not my problem in the slightest. It was a lot to convey in a shrug, but Howard was a politician – unlike a certain red haired meltran I could name, Howard could read entire _novels_ between the lines.

The greying man chuckled as he correctly interpreted my body language, still continuing to ignore what he came here to ask me in favour of pulling out a well-worn cigar case from his breast pocket. The case opened under his careful fingers, allowing me to spy a tag branding them as made on the Galaxy convoy.

"Bet they're expensive now that Galaxy has gone the way of the dodo," I casually noted, causing Howard to snort as he offered the case at me. I declined with a dismissive wave.

"Cheap, horrible, chemical plant grown tobacco. Smells like fertiliser and tastes like bleach." I eyed him askance as he randomly selected a cigar and put the case away. "Can't afford anything better at the moment," he shrugged.

I had difficulty believing that, considering what the bow must have cost him.

There was a lull in the already uninspired conversation as Howard patted himself down and came up with a cigar cutter and a lighter. It took him a small moment to get the tip of the cigar glowing a healthy red, and he celebrated this small achievement by blowing a mouthful of smoke all over his agent. Surprisingly, the agent simply gave his boss an almost playful slap upside the head and chuckled, prompting a chuckle in return from the greying president of Frontier. Another puff of smoke wafted gently away from Howard before he took the cigar from his mouth.

"Yuuya," he began slowly, "I... need some help."

I fought back my immediate urge to shoot him a sideways look and tell him 'no, really?' Instead I simply waited silently for a couple of seconds, choosing to save face by bringing my sarcastic urges under control.

"What's the problem?" I asked simply.

Howard still didn't make eye contact, instead choosing to speak out at the darkness in general.

"Someone's subverting my power in the government," he said. I waited for him to continue but he simply paused, as though thinking of what to say next, so I interrupted.

"That's not unusual," I noted. "The whole point of a democratic government is to provide checks on the people in power."

"That's not it," Howard sighed. "Political opponents and lobby groups I can deal with - it's what I've been doing for the past thirty years, sometimes from their side. No, this is different."

He paused thoughtfully, using the time to waft another puff of smoke out towards the darkness.

"Someone is subverting my authority from inside," he told me. "Edicts I sign sometimes simply don't happen, or take an inordinate amount of time to get going. Others are fine."

"Seems a little thin, evidence-wise" I noted.

"That's not all. Money has been disappearing from humanitarian budgets that no-one's bothering to tell me about, and someone appears to be buying off my security detail."

I immediately glanced at the agent standing behind us, ready to remove him of the arm he had slung in his coat, then his head, not necessarily in that order.

"Not him," Howard said quickly as he caught my motion, somewhat aware of what I could do if provoked, and I relaxed slightly. "Ivaylo here is the only completely loyal one I've got. In fact, he was the one who brought it to my attention."

"He's your only trusted agent?" I asked in disbelief. There had to be at least thirty men on that security detail all up, and if he was down to one that would actually look out for him if the wrong person's bullets started flying, he was going to be in a lot of strife.

"Not entirely. I've managed to buy off a couple myself, but if they can be bought, all they need is a better offer. So I don't trust them as much as Ivaylo," I was told, which made perfect sense to me.

"And if this person has their finger in the accounts…" I began, seeing where this was going and why Howard was up shit creek without a paddle.

"Then they'd be aware if I diverted more money around to pay off more of my agents," he confirmed for me.

Ouch. That meant he was bribing his _own_ agents from his own salary to keep it out from the eyes of whoever seemed to be ruling his government from the shadows. Talk about being in a bad position - if you couldn't trust the guys whose job it was to watch your back, who could you trust? It also explained why he was suddenly too broke for decent cigars.

I suddenly had a tangential thought - maybe the controller of the red variable fighter that kept cropping up was paying off someone in the military and police to keep their resupply area from being discovered. It made a lot more sense for that to be happening as opposed to the police and the N.U.N.S. not being able to find a large and resource heavy resupply dock. I filed that little conclusion away for the time being though, as I had another issue to deal with that was happening right now.

"If you don't know where this money is going, how do you know it's missing?" I asked, bringing the conversation back to a point I nearly completely skipped over.

The greying man sighed, leaning back on his chair and exhaling smoke, perhaps slightly relieved that I seemed to believe that his agent was secure. For the first time I bothered to really take in his appearance; his face was considerably more worn and wrinkled than when I'd watched his public announcement holos, and the bags under his eyes made him look a hell of a lot older than he actually was. In short, he looked considerably stressed.

"Same way I managed to get out here," Howard finally said after another puff on his cigar. "Every so often there's a small break in the schedule of my security detail where I'm covered by Ivaylo and the guys in my pocket, which gives me a small window to do some snooping. I have enough time to check balances, but not enough time to check all the transactions."

Made sense. Howard always seemed a step above the average public servant when it came to intellect, so trying to figure out what was happening in his government was something I'd have expected him to do. Normally I'd have expected him to get on top of it and stamp it out in short order as well, but judging by what I was hearing, whatever was happening had completely blindsided Howard and by the time he figured out something was fishy, it was too big for him to fight properly.

I nodded to show I was listening to what he was saying. It sounded like a considerable problem to tackle though, and I already had the Vajra to deal with, which had to be my main priority. Hell, I'd even promised my services to Ciel if she required them, although given we'd been out of contact from nearly a month, and Galaxy had been missing for half that time, I doubted she'd call that one in soon. The point was, if I stretched myself too far, I might not be able to accomplish anything - as much as I might want to help.

"Any idea what this guy, or conspiracy or whatever wants?" I asked the stressed leader of the Frontier convoy.

He examined his half-finished cigar for a second before shrugging. "I could guess, but I don't know for certain," he hedged.

"Well let's hear it then," I told him, not wanting to beat around the bush.

"I think they're trying to stir up the public against the Vajra," he said. "Money from relief funds seem to be the most prominent sources of missing cash, and a lot of my efforts to mobilise and coordinate repair and reconstruction work are being stymied."

"I'm failing to make the connection," I said thoughtfully. "It just sounds like you're sitting on some sort of scumbag embezzler."

"Like I said, it's only a guess," he reminded me, before continuing. "But it's an extremely crude, if effective way of stirring up anti-Vajra sentiment. Take a decent chunk of the resources I'm trying to dedicate to bringing everything back up to speed, piss them out the airlock, then blame the Vajra for the inability of the government to fix the poor state of living conditions? Easy money."

Howard was right. It was an extremely rough way to go about it, especially seeing as the Vajra were their own damn bad PR. Still, it wasn't like there was anything wrong with getting the populace a little riled up over the Vajra. There were a considerable number of loose ends attached to what was happening though. For example: why hurt the population to do something that would happen of it's own accord anyway? Where was all this money going? Why choose such a heavy handed method of action?

I sat in silence for a good moment or two, mulling over the possibilities. If Howard was right, there was the probability it would end up being related to whoever was calling to the Vajra, if that was indeed even the case, which would be something I needed to investigate. If he was wrong, then I'd just be wasting my time.

"What can you do about it?" I eventually ended up asked Howard, who had been staring absently off into the park. I wasn't entirely sure why I asked the question - maybe I was hoping he could handle it on his own for a little bit longer so I could weigh up my options.

"Not much," he admitted. "I've been caught flat out with my pants around my ankles on this one. Without knowing exactly what I'm up against or what they want, the only thing I can really do is keep acting as though nothing is going on. I mean, if I tip my hand and let slip that I know something is going on, I might scare them off…"

"… Or they might just kill you," I finished for him.

"Yeah, that," he said with a resigned sigh. "I just don't have enough information yet, and I can't afford to be too hasty getting that information. This isn't like the good old days unfortunately."

I tried to stifle a chuckle and ended up allowing a humorous snort to escape me. Howard might remember the time we spent together as the good old days - as a young politician he mounted a successful challenge on the leader of the Guardia colony, with myself being recruited to act as his aide for minimal salary, but for me it was just another job. It was his first real triumph in the political arena and involved a lot of legwork, dealing with some dirty dealers, successful navigation of the party back room and some real grass roots politicking.

In reality, I was effectively on assignment in my role as an agent of the Counter Force - the president of the Guardia colony at the time was a closet anti-human zentraedi who was planning to subjugate the human population of the colony and use it as a rallying point for all zentraedi who were unhappy living in cooperation with the humans. While Howard was publicly campaigning what seemed to be an even and democratic election, I was busy fending off kidnapping attempts on his young family (which was incidentally how I ended up 'babysitting' the young Catherine Glass), assassination attempts on his own life, discreetly disposing of the comrades of the zentran president and performing rather invasive spy work on the enemy camp in order to provide Howard with useful campaign information. By legitimately removing the zentraedi from power (despite his attempts to illegitimately remove us from the mortal coil) we broke his power base, placed a smart, peaceful, level-headed leader into power and more importantly prevented a bloody and divisive war that would have been several times the scale of Space War 1.

By the end, I was fairly sure Howard was aware in an abstract sense that I was providing a considerably higher level of service than he was paying me for, and seeing as he was acting as a conduit for the will of Alaya, I let him in on that secret before I moved on. He didn't really believe me of course, but promised that if we should come into contact again to rely on him for anything in his capability. So before I arrived at Frontier I had gotten in touch through a discreet channel, which had allowed us to set up the means of contacting each other when required.

"I can see," I noted, drawing myself back from the reminiscence. Fortunately the slow pacing of our conversation so far must have lead Howard to believe that I wasn't thinking about anything too earth shattering.

"It's just frustrating," he complained, breathing out an emphatic cloud of smoke. "I want to be able to get on with my job of trying to do what's best for the colony, but some moron is sitting around making me look incompetent, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. All I can do is plod on and keep making the calls and watch them get pulled down by some shadow that effectively has a gun to my neck!" He emphasised his point by apparently involuntarily crushing the remains of his cigar in his fist. The greying man stared briefly at the tobacco product in his hand before letting it drop unceremoniously to the ground and stamping on it a few times.

Howard wasn't the type to get emotional unless he was really _really_ worked up – his skill at his job demanded that he keep a level head as much as possible. He was as cornered where he was, with no options, and no-where to run.

"Please," he asked quietly, his voice almost a whisper. "Help me out."

I exhaled, bringing my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose. On one hand, it could be a giant waste of my time if Howard was jumping at shadows. On the other hand, if he was right it added another dimension to the rapidly spinning out of control web of half-hints and tantalizing not-quite-there clues I had regarding the nature of the Vajra threat to Frontier, and by extension, the human race.

Not to mention the extra amount of people who would die due to the deliberate misplacement and misuse of relief resources if this conspiracy (if it even existed) was allowed to continue unchecked.

And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that unless Howard was free to move around then I wouldn't be able to rely on him to provide essential knick-knacks and support when I needed it. This was very much a give-and-take situation indeed.

I sighed. That really made it no choice.

"I'm in," I told Howard, hiding the fact that I felt resigned to help, rather than being completely eager to get stuck into this problem. "What can I do?"

I don't think I've ever seen someone look quite as relieved as our erstwhile president did just then.

"Thanks Yuuya, I knew I could count on you."

Howard's hands dipped into his suit pockets again, coming halfway out with the cigar case before he changed his mind and shoved it back in again.

"I've got to say, I don't have a solid plan to use your talents," he admitted, "mostly because I wasn't even sure if you'd be able to lend a hand. I guess what I'd like you to do is identify the power behind this mess if you can. My hands are basically tied at the moment – I simply don't have the time, money, or trustworthy people to find out what's going on at this point."

"That's understandable," I agreed. Howard was currently sitting on a landmine – if he made one wrong move he'd set of an explosion that would end poorly for him and probably snowball down to the citizens of Frontier. His only move was to play it safe and predictable. "I can certainly look into it for you. There are two slight issues with that though."

Howard nodded. I knew he was smart enough to realise that I wouldn't be able to unconditionally help solve his problem. That was one of the helpful things about working with him, I remembered – he was very understanding if you had to worry about things other than his current project. That kind of understanding was very handy when it came to having to disappear for a few days to pay a visit to a... political rival.

"The first is that my time is already stretched. My main goal here is to figure out what the Vajra are up to and deal with them, and I have to prioritise that. If, however, what you're suggesting does happen to be true and there is some sort of connection between this power and the Vajra, then that won't be as much of an issue though."

"I figured that's why your, ahem, _employer,_ sent you out here in the first place," Howard noted with a quick shrug. "I'll try to manage as best I can for as long as I can regardless, of course."

Howard never quite really believed in Alaya despite my explanation of the Counter Force that I ended up giving him, but he was willing to believe that I worked for some kind of greater good that he wasn't privy to. Despite my insistence he would never call Alaya anything other than my employer, although that did have its uses on occasion. Like now for instance – where he didn't blab the existence of a gestalt consciousness that worked to saved humanity from extinction to his agent.

"The other problem is the fact that I simply have no government contacts apart from yourself, which will make the going even slower."

"That's not entirely true," Howard countered thoughtfully. "You should just talk to Cathy more often."

"Isn't she in the N.U.N.S., not the government?"

"Well yes, but she is engaged to one of my aides, and she is a bit of a gossip. For example, I know that you've been sleeping with one of the meltrans in your company. Aren't you a bit old for that kind of thing?" he said, without skipping a beat.

It took me a second or two to replace my jaw in it's usual locked position, which gave Howard the perfect opportunity to chuckle a little at me. When we had both regained our composure, I cleared my throat pointedly.

"First of all, no I haven't been," I began, clearing the air over that particular matter. "Secondly, point taken."

A pointed cough from Ivaylo prompted Howard to glance at his watch. We had barely been here twenty minutes, but it appeared Howard didn't even have that long.

"Well, I'd better get back home before I get caught out," Howard said, standing to leave. "I do have one last thing to add though. Whoever is behind this has a lot of power and definitely caught me off guard, but the way they're waving their influence about bluntly leads me to believe they aren't very experienced at this kind of stuff. They might simply like to think otherwise, or they might be an unwilling dupe for something deeper. Keep that in mind."

Trust Howard to be completely blindsided yet still remain calm enough to recognise the abilities of the threat he was faced with and react accordingly. If he hadn't been blindsided by the quick power expansion of whoever was causing the problem, I'd have liked to see our president politically take the threat apart piece by piece. Still, that was neither here nor there, and we had to play the hand we were dealt. If that meant he'd have to play the bumbling public servant, so be it.

"Let me know if you manage to scrounge some good info up," I said, rising off the bench myself and shaking his hand. "Good luck Howard. Oh, and thanks for the bow."

"I hope you'll make good use out of it. Good luck to you too Yuuya," he replied simply, before breaking the handshake and striding back off the way he came, Ivaylo the agent following like a faithful hound.

Well, this was sure to be another pain in the arse for me to sort out, although as I made my way back to the Quarter, I began to wonder if it would be harder than sorting out the mess that my relationship with Nene and Ramaria had recently become.

* * *

_Author's notes:_

First of all; thanks to everyone who dropped in a review, it's much appreciated. On the topic of much appreciated things, thanks to Vandenbz again for proof-reading the entire chapter, helps me save a considerable amount of face (seriously, the amount of double words I somehow seem to throw in without thinking is pretty ridiculous).

There are a few spoilers for Macross Frontier below this point, so keep that in mind. This chapter hopefully marks the end of the character building that I need to do by sort of stirring the Nene/Ramaria/Shirou pot considerably, as well as introducing Shirou's contact in the government, none other than the head honcho himself, Howard Glass. I think I might have fluffed the reveal a bit unfortunately – I meant to drop a few hints here and there that that was the case, but I think I might have overdone it. Oh well. Howard is a character that comes across as if not completely hopeless, then the next best thing in the original series. He basically spends all his time trying to escape from the Vajra in order to be able to replenish the rapidly diminishing supplies of the fleet, apparently unaware that the real power in his government is the man behind the man. When I first thought of the idea for Wings, I really wanted to expand his character a bit by making him quite savvy, instead of clueless. Canon Howard worked for Macross Frontier because the bad guy power dynamics are basically invisible to the main characters until near the end of the series – making him a simple dupe for Leon. By the time the heroes figure out what he's up to, it's already happened. In the case of Wings however, Shirou is actively sticking his nose into places that weren't really explored in Frontier (or at least he's trying to, with varying amounts of success). Shirou's convinced himself there's a plot and he's trying to determine what it is and who's behind it – and having a smart Howard who got blindsided by Leon's rapid expansion of power to the point where he can't really do anything suddenly makes the whole plotline about Leon's conspiracy and grab for power a lot more interesting in this story.

Or so I hope. Time will tell I guess.

Shirou suddenly becoming aware of Nene and Ramaria as something slightly more than good pilots and friends is something that I knew would be coming, but am sort of dreading writing – I don't really have a head for the kind of drama that's going to inevitably bring, but it should be a good learning experience at least. Our hero also finally has Grace on his potential bad guy radar as well, further adding to my hope that the build up character-wise is pretty much done with this chapter. Hopefully that means I can just roll a couple events into the story and they'll pretty much write themselves without me having to force characterisation in as well, which would be good for lazy old me :p

Coming up – Movie making!


	14. Legend of Zero

Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.

* * *

Chapter 14: Legend of Zero

* * *

"Alto! Shirou! What are you two doing?!"

I rolled my eyes as the incredibly ear piercing voice of Sheryl Nome, galactic fairy, demanded to know what her two minions were up to. I made a show of checking my watch.

"We're still on break for another thirty seconds," I yelled back cheerfully, turning to face up a long flight of stairs to give the diva a smile and a wave that I knew would infuriate her.

Sure enough, it worked. A pilot suit boot came down forcefully on the concrete at the top of stairs and gloved hands immediately went to hips as she processed what I'd said to her. Saotome glanced up at the pink haired songstress, having been distracted away from a furtive phone conversation he was trying to have by all the yelling in his general vicinity. The slight pause and almost imperceptible reddening around his cheeks spoke volumes about the incredibly striking pose Sheryl was cutting from our point of view, and again reinforcing my belief that her physical assets played a large part in her ability to attract young male fans.

The she opened her mouth and suddenly the image shattered.

"We're shooting the next take now," she yelled back petulantly. "Get back up here!"

"Sorry Ranka," Saotome muttered into his phone in a hurry, snapping out of his semi-trance. "I've gotta go now. Bye!"

Saotome quickly cut the line and shoved the phone into the helmet he was holding in his other hand - the only spare receptacle he had, pockets being for some reason having being omitted in the latest update to SMS pilot suits. We fell into step as we climbed the stairs in Griffith Park up to the area where a pair of Messiahs and a filming crew were waiting. The galactic fairy herself had temporarily skipped out of our view, probably to go give a piece of her mind to the director in charge of the commercial.

I must admit, I was reasonably curious as to what Saotome was talking to Ranka about – there was one line in particular he'd said (or from the sound of it, quoted) that was considerably more sophisticated than I'd have expected out of him. For a brief second I considered dancing around the subject, but quickly dismissed it. The blue haired junior pilot had the annoying ability to see through my personality, so I tended to drop the politeness when it was just the two of us – a course of action I figured I'd stick with here.

"That was a pretty philosophical quote there Saotome. What was it? 'Thinketh not and thou shalt be the blossom. Thinketh and thou shalt not be.'?" I asked him.

Saotome shrugged. "Just some advice for Ranka. She picked up a bit part in a movie and sounded kind of nervous about it. It basically means that you should become the role when you act, or you won't give a fully believable performance."

"I know," I told him, rolling my eyes. "I heard you explain it on the phone a few seconds ago."

The blue haired kid paused for a second as though thinking of something. "It's advice you could take as well," he noted. "It's what really gives you away to anyone who knows what to look for."

I suppressed any outward reaction to his comment, keeping my ghost of a grin up as we made our way up the stairs. Saotome almost never failed take the opportunity to remind me that he knew the face I was showing everyone at our company wasn't my real personality when we were alone, possibly as a way to strike back against the authority I had enforced upon him in our earliest few meetings.

Suddenly the kid frowned. "Although it's not as bad as when we first met. Have you been practising?"

"Not really," I said as we reached the top of the stairs. Although Saotome knew I was hiding something, he never bothered to tell anyone, nor did he try to pry into what it was I was hiding. It made it surprisingly easy to talk to him about this kind of stuff, provided I didn't try to deny what I was doing.

His observation did worry me slightly though - it meant that Saotome thought I was becoming the act I was playing to a certain degree, although in what particular sense I couldn't tell. I decided to steer the conversation onto safer ground.

"So Ranka got a bit part in a movie huh?" I began as we continued to amble towards our Messiahs. "All that promo work she's been doing must be paying off then."

Saotome nodded in way of reply. "She seemed pretty excited, even if it's only for a bit part. I suppose we all start somewhere," he mused, before his expression turned slightly sour.

Perhaps he was reflecting on the fact that there was little excitement left for him in acting - the only reason we were out here was because it was cheaper to hire SMS for use in a commercial shoot than get the military properly involved. Then again, perhaps he'd gone a little sour because he'd just spotted Sheryl Nome, upright, regal and approaching us from the general direction of the director.

"What's that?" she asked in tones of someone confident of getting an answer. "Ranka-chan has a bit part in a movie?"

"Not that it's really any of your business, but yes. The movie about Mayan Island that they're shooting," Saotome replied, the tone of his voice rising as he sensed conflict incoming.

Surprisingly, Sheryl didn't rise to the bait, instead choosing to bring a finger up to her mouth in a thoughtful motion. It looked delightfully charming, although the act failed to impress either Saotome or myself, who by now had enough of an association with the diva that we were capable of seeing through it. It did appear, however, that her lack of rebuttal seemed to have caught Saotome slightly by surprise, and he deflated slightly as it became apparent Sheryl simply didn't care that much for arguing.

"I think I've been invited to the set of that - one of my songs has been licensed as the main theme. . . Grace!"

Sheryl cast about, looking for her dark haired manager - one that I knew for a fact was not around. I had initially been leery about this assignment for a couple of reasons, and Grace O'Connor was one of them. I had recently identified her a possible lead in determining the nature of the Vajra attacks on the fleet, and I wanted to minimise the time we spent in close proximity in public until I'd had a chance to determine exactly if and how she was involved. It wasn't that I wouldn't be able to snoop around while she was about - but if she was the person who set me up for a beating from my new cyborg friend a couple of weeks ago, then it meant she was pretty on the ball when it came to counter-intelligence, and I didn't like my odds of remaining undetected by her if she were around.

Thankfully though she'd disappeared almost as soon as she'd dropped Sheryl at this set, without really stopping to say so much as 'hello' to the director.

Sheryl glanced about hopefully for another second or two before realising that her manager (and by extension, her schedule) wasn't around.

"Guess I'll have to double check that later," the pink haired songstress muttered darkly, before her voice rose into that lilting tone she reserved for trying to play a crowd. "Oh well. Are you boys ready to set the passions of the people ablaze?"

"Absolutely," I replied deadpan, rolling my eyes. I shrugged on my helmet and set the flash compensators to darken the faceplate as much as I could without going completely blind. "Let's get this over with."

Of course, the another reason I was leery about this assignment was the fact that I would be on camera, and especially in such a high profile piece of work (what with being in the background of currently the most popular person in human space). My face on this commercial would make it considerably more difficult to get around safely on other identities when my job on Frontier was done, and easily tip off any potential enemies that I wasn't who I appeared to be if they bothered to do their homework.

Hence the stipulation that I would have my face covered the whole time while shooting. Hell, I originally didn't want to take part in this commercial at all. There was one sole reason I was out here, and she was standing in front of me.

Sheryl had hoped to remind the 'fickle public' as she'd called them about how her home convoy Macross Galaxy was still missing after the large scale Vajra attack a month or so ago. To that end she wove a number of high profile events into a publicity campaign urging people to be prepared to fight the Vajra should they encroach upon this convoy, and by extension help maintain the search for the Galaxy convoy.

What I was in the process of finding out is that as a general rule of thumb, what Sheryl Nome wants, Sheryl Nome gets. Up to and including her choice of pilots to act as backing in a holo commercial.

I'd heard from Bobby, who'd heard it from Lam, who'd heard it from Captain Wilder, who was there during the negotiations; once Sheryl's credit card had crossed the table, our accountants fell backwards over themselves to make sure that every stipulation and demand Sheryl had for the use of our 'services' was met. The main one being the demand that Saotome and myself were the pilots to be provided for the commercial.

"Yeah," Saotome agreed, bringing my mind back to the conversation. "Let's do this."

We both clambered into the cockpits of our variable fighters (the use of EX-gear wasn't permitted as apparently our old fashioned pilot suits made us appear more heroic), leaving Sheryl to follow me towards my VF-25. The commercial called for Saotome to swoop in as I held a singing Sheryl in one manipulator arm and fired blanks out of a gun-pod held in the other.

I felt extra tension on the rope ladder as I reached the top and looked down to find the galactic fairy gamely climbing the ladder after me, as though her being in my cockpit would somehow make it easier for me to safely get her into the manipulator arm. I sighed, swung myself into the cockpit and began bringing my systems online as Sheryl continued up the rope ladder. Her ascent was briefly halted as Saotome's GERWALK-mode Messiah erupted into the air on a plume of jet wash, but it didn't take long for the swaying girl to complete her climb to my cockpit.

"So Shirou," the girl said with no preamble, "when are you going to tell me about you-know-what? I've kept up my end of the bargain."

Ugh. I should have realised something like this was coming when Sheryl decided that I just _had_ to be part of the team for this commercial. Idly I wondered what Saotome had managed to do to get the same treatment, and suddenly felt glad that my darkened visor hid my facial features. The 'you-know-what' was undoubtedly a reference to her glimpse of my Tracing of Gram that I'd performed in order to destroy a red Vajra drone and save both our lives by extension. It was a difficult subject to deal with - at the time I'd manipulated her into keeping the secret of my ability to go toe-to-toe with a space monster twenty times my size by promising that if she kept her mouth shut, I'd tell her how I did it.

I really had no intention of holding up my end of that bargain.

"Later," I told the young woman, before dropping into a considerably more conspiratorial tone of voice. "I'd like to be able to tell you now, but there's someone I've got to figure out before I can trust you with more. I'm sorry."

It was completely true, and totally misleading. I needed to figure out her manager before I would even _consider_ telling Sheryl about magecraft. At the same time, I never was going to tell her about magecraft. Hopefully the implication in my words would keep Sheryl's mind entertained with all sorts of clandestine possibilities.

Sheryl stared straight at the dark visor covering my eyes, as though somehow trying to read my face through the darkened plexiglass. Eventually she decided that it was downright impossible and pouted beautifully.

"Promise?" she asked, bringing her lower lip into full play. Strangely, her tone didn't match her actions - where one would expect a pout to be accompanied by a pleading tone, the pink haired songstress simply applied her usual confident voice to the question, forcing a quick re-evaluation on the maturity of the young woman. It almost made me feel bad about lying to her - she'd proven trustworthy, upfront, mature and discreet where required.

Still, I wasn't going to bend on this matter. "Promise," I replied simply, despite the fact there was no shred of honesty in the word.

It seemed to be good enough for Sheryl though, who retracted her lip with a nod. "I'll hold you to that," she informed me regally.

A tinny voice in my ear informing me of the timing for the shot we were going to take ended that conversation. I gave the galactic fairy a slightly overdone wave as I brought the manipulator arm around for her to climb onto, and with that we made a commercial.

* * *

"Wait, what," I said flatly, letting Ozma know in no uncertain terms what I thought of what he'd just told me. "More filming?"

"Weeeell," the greying Squadron Commander drawled somewhat apologetically, "you won't be so much involved in the filming as you will be chaperoning."

"You know Ozma, you're not really selling this to me at all."

"Look Shirou, they only need two variable fighters for this Mayan Island movie. We've got that covered with Michel and Luca. Bobby is tagging along to do make-up for Ranka, but we need someone from the squadron to keep an eye on things for insurance purposes. All you have to do is show up to a resort hotel and watch people film for a few days. You don't even have to leave the bar if you don't want to!"

Wait? Bobby was doing the make-up? I wasn't sure if I would trust a guy whose only demonstration of work I'd seen was setting Saotome up for a practical joke, but if that was the plan, then who was I to argue. To be fair, Ozma knew more about Bobby than I did, so presumably make-up was one of his hidden talents. Better to get on with the relevant parts of this little 'mission' I was being lined up for.

"So why aren't you on this assignment if it's so good?" I asked simply, trying to figure out the catch.

"I may have been, uh, stood down from this assignment by the captain," Ozma answered evasively, prompting me to raise an eyebrow questioningly.

"Care to elaborate?" I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I knew exactly what Captain Wilder was on about.

"Something about 'conflict of interest'," my squad commander muttered, very much on the border of audibility.

"Were those his exact words?"

"His exact words were something along the lines of 'they won't be able to film a damn movie if you're trying to use your Messiah to squash everyone who looks at Ranka funny'," he admitted, and I allowed myself to chuckle. My guess was on the money.

"So will you do it?" Ozma continued hopefully, and I weighed up my options. If all I had to do was kick back and keep an eye on things I couldn't really see how difficult that would be, especially if I had the option to stay well out of the action - I might even get time to continue looking into Grace O'Connor's disturbingly clean profile.

Additionally, seeing as Sheryl wasn't actually an actor in the film, it would be highly unlikely to find both her and her manager there, making it a safe enough place to be. It also helped that I knew Saotome was still supposed to be working with the diva, and Ozma hadn't mentioned anything about the long haired rookie coming along with us.

"Yeah, alright," I replied eventually, after making a show of looking thoughtful. "How hard can it be to keep an eye on everyone anyway?"

* * *

I'd arrived at filming location on Island 2 shortly after Mikhail and Luca had landed their Messiah's smack-bang in the middle of a shoot, apparently pissing off both the producer and set designers immensely. I didn't really have to deal too much with the fallout of that thankfully, as without the usual belligerence of Saotome, they were quick to apologise and prepare for the takes involving their birds.

Which they were then informed where delayed until tomorrow.

"And that's where we currently stand," Mikhail told me as he casually lounged up against the trunk of a palm tree. I glanced around, allowing that subconscious battle-sense of mine to catalogue the potential terrain advantages and hazards to avoid if I were to suddenly get into a fight. A root here, a scrabbled patch of sand there. . . it all added up in a fight, and I almost found it calming to let my mind go about its business deciding where I would force enemies towards, and where I could safely retreat to if required.

The set was based on a tropical island – part of a large resort allotment on the Island 2 colony ship. Apparently the entire island had been leased for the shooting of this movie, despite the fact that the staff were apparently content to use only the strip of beach that we were currently set up on.

"Sounds wonderfully boring," I replied, my eyes scanning the water and spotting a boat approaching the wonderfully haphazard pile of lashed driftwood that seemed to be the only jetty on this island. Out of curiosity I Reinforced my eyes, snapping the blurry figures on the hull of the craft into focus. There were a crowd of people on it, probably staff for the shooting, or movie extras. My guess was confirmed when I spotted a familiar mop of green hair among the crowd, allowing me to identify Ranka Lee.

Even more noticeable was the incredible mass of curly hair attached to the person she was standing next to - Bobby Margot, the incredibly bipolar helmsman of the Macross Quarter. As it turned out, Bobby was more than just a dab hand when it came to make-up - he was downright famous in the underground make-up scene on Frontier under the pseudonym _Jebediah Tong_, to the point where he was forced to retire as the deluge of requests from the stars of Frontier's pop culture began to cut deleteriously into his real job.

Or at least according to Ozma; my own digging on our helmsman had turned up none of this information, so I still remained slightly skeptical about his abilities with the powder fluff.

"That looks like the boat Ranka and Bobby are on," I told my squad-mates, nodding towards the approaching vessel. "Want to go say hi?"

Luca agreed with a vigorous nod and pulled himself up off the sand, joining Mikhail and myself as we made our way towards the ramshackle jetty.

"This island really feels like Mayan Island would have," Luca bubbled excitedly, his natural curiosity apparently having risen to the fore while he was setting up his VF-25.

"And how do you know what Mayan Island would have looked like?" Asked Mikhail - gently ribbing his younger classmate.

"It just does," Luca huffed, a touch petulantly. "The declassified documents said it was a tropical island in the middle of the old Pacific Ocean right? This is definitely a tropical island, so it just feels right."

Mikhail snorted. "I'll bet there were all sorts of tropical islands," he said, putting on an air of knowledge. "We don't know all that much about the geography of little islands before Space War 1."

It was my turn to snort, or at least almost. I managed to keep it back, just. As it happened, I did know a considerable amount about tropical islands on Earth pre-Space War 1 - their general remoteness meant they were often used by… _undesirables…_ as bases of operation. Many of these undesirables had earned the ire of the Mage's Association, typically due to forbidden research. In those days earning the ire of the Mage's Association had a tendency to fill your backyard with angry Enforcers. After the Enforcers had cleared the area up Rin was often called out along with Lord El-Melloi (one of the few mages apart from Rin who I'd been able to slightly relate to) to clean up and confirm any rituals had been dismantled - the pair of them having obtained a reputation for this kind of thing after dismantling the ritual that the Holy Grail War was based upon. As Rin's apprentice, I was naturally dragged along in the vain hope I would be able to absorb something about the processes involved.

What I had learned about tropical islands was that they usually came in two varieties. The first were too small to support anything but a small beach and a couple of palm trees. The second type had been similar, in a sense, but large enough to replace 'a few palm trees' with a tropical jungle. This island definitely qualified as the latter. Given that the real Mayan Island apparently supported a tribe of people, it was safe to say that our set would be similar enough to the real thing. I hummed thoughtfully to myself. Mayan Island, huh? I'd heard the stories about it when the reports surrounding the events that had occurred there were declassified. The fact that I hadn't heard of it before meant that _someone_ in the military was doing their job and keeping classified documents hidden and under wraps. I mean, sure, not turning up that information was a bit of a black mark against my general information gathering abilities, but it also meant that someone, somewhere wasn't cocking up their job of keeping important secrets safe from people who could do a lot of harm with them.

It was then that I was hit with a sudden burst of clarity. The dots regarding Mao Nome, the name attached to all those academic journal articles that I'd connected to Grace, intuitively connected in my head. The factor that allowed me to connect my old dusty memories was the name of this damn island that we were making a film about! Once upon a time I remembered Rin telling me that Mao and her tribe lived on Mayan Island, and the discussion about our set had jogged my memory. Actually, if I recall correctly, Rin's actual words were; 'They live on some place called Mayan Island. What the heck kind of backwater is that? I've never heard of it before! Does it even exist? I bet someone is pulling my leg!'

The reason that had come in conversation was business - Mao was wanted by the Clock Tower for questioning (only in the loosest sense of the word - dissection would probably be closer to the mark) regarding possible contact with an extra-terrestrial being. Normally, contact with a Type would have warranted a prompt and brutally efficient response. However, news of this event was simply a rumour that arrived in the Clock Tower a week or so before the onset of Space War 1.

Ahhh… Now that I had a hint of what I was trying to remember, the memories rose in my mind. Rin had told me that the information seemed so absurd that no response was organised for a couple of days so the information could be verified. There had been no corroborating evidence discovered before Space War 1 suddenly hit the planet, and then the Clock Tower suddenly had extra-terrestrial contact out of their ears to deal with - all of it hostile. So Mao Nome managed to obtain a stay of execution as the Clock Tower fought against the Zentraedi, and when the Mages Association went down, there was no-one to enforce the questioning.

I hadn't given it a second thought at the time, but given the contents of the U.N.'s declassified files surrounding the Mayan Island incident; it suddenly seemed blatantly obvious that the information that had reached the Clock Tower wasn't just rumour. Given Mao's attachment to the 117th Expeditionary Fleet as a fairly high ranked researcher by 2047, it would be fair to assume she was… considerably affected by the experience.

My self introspection was interrupted as we made the transition from sand to rickety old jetty and I found myself carefully checking the integrity of the structure for a third time today. The boat ferrying the extra staff across was on the verge of arriving, and one of the crew gestured at us in a vague fashion with a bit of rope. I assumed he was hoping to get one of us to catch it for it, so I held my hand up in response. Sure enough, a flying coil slapped into my hand, and seconds later I was given a heart attack as the (rather bulky) crewman slammed onto the rickety boards of the jetty. Fortunately the damn thing didn't break and send us into the drink.

"Thanks," he said simply, after I'd recovered my wits and handed him the rope.

"Hey guys," came Ranka's voice from the ship. "I didn't know you'd be here!"

Well. It appeared as though Ozma had decided not to talk to Ranka at all about our involvement with the filming and my role as chaperone. That probably wasn't a bad thing, given the fact that our most esteemed Squad Commander was forcibly stood down from this mission, but it was a bit surprising.

"SMS are here to help with the filming," Luca offered cheerfully, waving an arm in the general direction of our parked Messiahs. The sailor had by now finished tying up the boat, and a weedy looking gangplank was being extended from the deck towards the platform.

"Really?" The young green haired girl always seemed energetic, and today was no exception. "Then does that mean Alto-kun…?" She left the question hanging, causing me to idly wonder why she cared whether or not Saotome was hanging around in the wings.

"Not today," Mikhail replied, somewhat evasively. "He's out on other work."

Other work, as far as I knew, meant advertisements with Sheryl, although for the life of me I couldn't figure out why he didn't just let the young girl know that.

It was at that moment the incessant _thwop-thwop-thwop_ sound of helicopter rotors became the dominant noise in the immediate vicinity, and the accompanying gusts of air had Ranka desperately clutching at her dress and hat in order to save both her modesty and her sun protection. A helicopter passed low overhead, angling towards a section of the beach cordoned off as a landing zone, and with a final gale-force blast of sand the helicopter touched down.

"Well, whoever that is, they know how to make an entrance," I noted. The occupants still hadn't disembarked from the helicopter, as the winding down rotors were still tossing sand around and would continue to do so for a minute or so.

"Oh no," crooned Bobby the weird tone of voice that was usually reserved for messing with Ozma or myself. "We'll have to completely redo your make-up now!" I glanced at Ranka, whom he was obviously talking to, and for the life of me couldn't spot any difference between now and two minutes ago. Well, apart from the ruffled clothing and frizzled hair.

"Elmo," Bobby continued, dropping back to his normal tone of voice. "I'm borrowing Ranka for another ten minutes. We simply can't let her be seen like this!"

A micronized zentran with purple hair and unusual glasses looked thankfully at Bobby before bowing profusely.

"Oh thank you, legendary make-up artist. If we have Ranka looking like a star maybe they'll increase her screen time," the slightly rotund Zentran said enthusiastically. Bobby gave a stern nod of approval and led Ranka towards the aft of the ship, leaving the purple haired Zentran to disembark with the other passengers.

"So, you strapping young specimens must be the SMS pilots I was told about," he began jovially as he stepped off the gangplank. "Ever considered a career in acting instead of shooting people?"

I gave the Zentran a bemused look as he continued on his introductory tirade, and idly noticed Mikhail paying a bit more attention to the Zentran than I would have expected.

"My name is Elmo Kridanik, president of Vector Productions and Ranka's manager," he told us without skipping a beat. Just as smoothly, his hand dived into his unbuttoned jacket and returned bearing three business cards, which were then handed out to us three pilots in quick order.

"So are you hiring dashing young men looking to break into the film industry?" Mikhail asked quickly, and I couldn't help but notice the extra fraction of a second he took to frame himself as he asked the question.

"Mmm, well, not really," the middle aged Zentran answered after a moment's thought. "It's a nice ice-breaking line though isn't it?" Elmo offered somewhat apologetically, causing Luca to burst out into laughter as Mikhail slumped in disappointment. While I secretly found the exchange just as hilarious as my younger squad-mate, I simply allowed my lips to curve upwards in a bemused smile.

Further conversation was put on hold as the doors to the helicopter that had recently landed slid open, revealing three people. The first, and most easily identifiable due to a mass of strawberry blonde hair was the galactic diva, Sheryl Nome. The second, and as far as I could tell, the least impressed with the entire situation was my remaining squad-mate, Saotome. The third was a person that I very, _very_ much did not want to see – the dark straight hair, and angular features identified her as Grace O'Connor.

Of all the bloody places to be on this convoy and she had to be here! Sometimes I think someone is up there, writing the story of my life and laughing at all the misfortune they put me in.

I immediately turned my back on the trio emerging from the helicopter and wandered up the rickety old gangplank onto the little boat that had brought the crew to the island. I waved away Luca and Mikhail's confused protests about that action, simply letting them know that I thought they had the situation under control and that I was going back to the hotel. In reality, I didn't want to be around Grace O'Connor at this point in time. Although I was aware the possibility of her being connected to the Vajra was slim, I knew it was a stronger lead than any other I'd picked up during my time on Frontier. I was _very_ wary about her possible intelligence gathering capabilities, and I certainly didn't want to tip my hand in any way, shape or form. So the best option was to get the hell out of dodge for the time being – and a quick check this the boat's pilot confirmed for me that it was going back to the island where our hotel was. It was a good as place as any to run off to, and once Bobby and Ranka had finished with her make-up, we got under way.

* * *

Within half an hour the boat had made it to the resort island where the cast and crew for the movie were staying. As part of the stunt staff (read: their variable fighter crew) we were put up in a decent hotel against the movie's budget, which worked well for us. The hotel itself had a cafe downstairs which took advantage of the seafront view the property had, and seeing as it was now approaching lunchtime, I decided to take advantage of the cafe.

I quickly scanned the room before ordering a club sandwich and some iced tea. Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary – tourists made up a large proportion of the cafe's clientele, although there were a fair few people in unassuming business suits. I attributed that to the conference on bio-medicinal science being held at a hotel further down the road. With Grace still (hopefully) on the island with Sheryl, and likely to be busy managing the diva, I figured that here was safe enough to continue digging around for information on the woman.

With that in mind I found a seat that provided a decent view over the rest of the establishment, with easy access to the large windowed section that was wonderfully framing the view - just in case I found myself needing to make a quick exit. My bases now covered, I dug out my portable terminal and started tapping away at the keys.

Despite my best intentions however, another half an hour of digging didn't produce any new information. Given the fact that I'd sunk upwards of twenty five hours during the past week on the endeavour, I wasn't overly surprised that another half hour didn't turn up anything, but I was still disappointed. I glanced at my half eaten sandwich, my food having fallen prey to my ability to get far too involved in my work to pay attention to minor human needs, such as sustenance. I decided to show it some love by taking another bite before continuing the search, and just as I bit into the delicious goodness, I heard a voice that nearly made me choke.

"...all the data we have on the Vajra and the Valkyrie."

As casually as I could, I immediately powered down my terminal while desperately trying not to choke on a piece of chicken that just would not go down the right pipe. That voice! It was filtered and slightly modified, but I was absolutely certain. It belonged to Grace O'Connor!

I finally managed to force down the offending chunk of chicken, and while checking for the third time that my portable terminal was turned off, I quickly fed odo into my ear drums and the innumerable soft hairs used to pick up sound. I couldn't immediately hear her talking again, but I quickly filtered through the rest of the conversations that my suddenly super sensitive hearing was picking up and found a likely candidate for her conversation partner.

"... have no confirmation that the information you've given me is fact, I can't promise anything." The voice was... inconspicuous. It was definitely a male, probably middle aged. Still not _definitely_ the person that Grace was talking to, but the subject matter seemed similar enough.

"Hummm," Grace mused. "This ship has a number of species introduced from Eden, correct? Hydras, for example?"

That confirmed it for me. Whoever Grace was talking to was this middle aged man. I could easily pinpoint the source of the conversation with my reinforced ears, but had kept my head down out of prudence so far – if Grace _was_ onto me, she certainly wouldn't be talking about this kind of stuff if she'd noticed I was around.

I quickly glanced towards the section of the window where I heard the voices coming from, pretending to scan the whole room as I did so in order to allay suspicions.

"What of them?" Asked a man in a horrible hawaiian shirt. He was apparently talking to himself - there was no-one sitting at the table with him. His hair was brown and almost cut in a bowl, and his ferret-like features seemed familiar somehow, although for the life of me, I couldn't place his face. His voice was definitely the one talking to Grace, although the fact that I could hear her but couldn't spot her was worrying me a little. I slowly tightened my hands around invisible hilts.

I heard Grace chuckle, and suddenly realised where her voice was coming from - A suited person sitting directly behind my new ferret faced friend. A remote conversation then. The suit was sitting with it's back towards me, so the only feature I could make out was a short-cut buzz of dark purple hair.

"Eventually you'll find out about the true horror of the Vajra," The suit relayed for Grace. I couldn't determine the method used for relaying her voice, but then again, there was very little I could make out about the suit, who had apparently chosen that spot to hide himself as well as possible.

The ferret-faced man chuckled, perhaps choosing to interpret Grace's words without their due seriousness. I risked another sweep of my eyes across the room, using reinforcement to determine if I could spot anything I missed the first time around. Nothing really… wait. On ferret-face's table. A crystal in a specimen container. It looked extremely similar to the crystal that was the centrepiece of Sheryl's earring.

Suddenly the suit stood up. "You'll be in touch, I assume," is what I heard.

"Naturally," ferret-face replied.

As the suit made to leave the room, I had to make a quick decision. Did I stay to keep an eye on ferret-face, or did I follow the suit out and find out what I could from him? There was definitely something odd going on here, and the fact that I had decided to stop in this cafe for lunch was probably not a coincidence, at least when considering how my benefactor tended to work, so not chasing up one of these leads that had effectively been gifted to me was out of the question.

I quickly decided that following the suit was my best option. Although I couldn't quite remember where I'd met ferret-face before, I was confident enough that once I turned my mind to it I'd be able to identify him. The suit, on the other hand, was a complete unknown, and apparently far more related to Grace O'Connor than ferret-face. Given the topic of their incredibly short conversation, it was also now a fairly safe bet that Grace _definitely_ knew more about the Vajra than a singer's manager would be expected to, which made following that up a higher priority.

Besides, if I was lucky ferret-face would still be here when I finished up with the suit.

I quickly got up and tailed the suit as he left the building, keeping a decent amount of distance between us as I did. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to discreetly capture him before he left the building, but fortunately for me he bypassed the taxi rank and car park on the outside, electing instead to proceed by foot down the hotel strip. I continued following at a distance, using meandering groups of tourists as cover to stay out of view of my mark. Eventually the scenery started becoming a bit more built up, and the crowds started to thin out considerably. The suit eventually turned off the main road into a small side alley about a block ahead of me.

Not wanting to be caught out in an alley _again_, I was cautious in my approach, once again applying reinforcement magecraft to sharpen my hearing. As I approached the corner, I could definitely hear rhythmic breathing, but no footsteps. Either the suit was waiting for something, or he was waiting for _me._

I quickly dove into the wasteland of my soul, bringing back up with me the blueprints of my two favoured weapons, Kansha and Bukuya. I could taste them in the air, merely an application of prana away from being imprinted onto the world of Frontier. So prepared, I stepped around the corner.

Ten metres away from me was the suit. Despite my care in following him, I had somehow given myself away - he was staring right at me, hands at his sides. He was very definitely waiting for me. Now that I was up close, I could quite easily make out the suit's nondescript features. The face was angular, but unremarkable. Sunglasses covered his eyes, but I thanks to my reinforced eyesight I could make out his purple iris' underneath the shades, which matched his purple buzz cut.

Oddly enough, he made no sign of attacking me or running away, which lead me to believe that he obviously didn't talk to my cyborg friend. If he had heard of what we'd gotten up to he'd certainly be either in flight or trying to charge me. Instead, he opened his mouth.

"Shirou Emiya," spoke Grace's voice, minus the filtering and modulation. If I weren't in battle mode I probably would have blinked in surprise. I was expecting some sort of radio device to act as the relay, but this person was actually speaking with Grace's voice.

"You've rapidly become a pest with your constant poking into places best left untouched," he said. Still Grace's voice, and still as cold and detached as when he was talking to ferret-face.

The fact that this person (or voice box) was talking, as opposed to fighting or attempting to flee spoke volumes of his confidence. It was almost laughable, except for the fact that the longer I kept him (her?) talking, the more information I could get freely. Once I captured him, he would speak of course. The only issue was that under duress, the information was less liable to be accurate.

"Grace O'Connor," I replied flatly, giving away no trace of emotion. "I was under the impression you were currently coddling a galactic idol."

"I'm good at multi-tasking," the suit replied. It was unusual. Something was weird. Then it clicked. While Grace's voice had a sliver of amusement in it, the facial features of the suit hadn't changed at all, creating an even greater dissonance between what I was hearing and what I was seeing.

"Good to know," I replied, keeping my face neutral.

"Unfortunately, your clumsy attempts at meddling are treading close to information that I would like to remain secret. Under normal circumstances I'd be prepared to provide you a warning. However," - there was a brief pause as the suit brought up a hand filled with a RPK-47 sub-machine gun - "I'm of the opinion that you know exactly what you're doing, and as such will extend you the professional courtesy of not providing a warning."

The weapon hummed, it's electromagnetic coils spitting bullets at the location I had vacated a split second earlier. I braced myself against the wall I'd just flung myself against before the suit could correct his aim and using my Reinforced legs, flung myself at him. I was yet to complete the Tracing of my two weapons - I was of the belief that the suit still thought it was in control of the fight and therefore a possibility to continue talking freely, given the proper incentive.

Faster than a person should have been able to react, the suit dropped the sub-machine gun and brought it's hands around to parry a bare fisted strike that I launched. We exchanged blows faster than any normal human would be expected to react, and I allowed myself to be driven back a couple of steps after our initial exchange. The suit opened it's mouth while keeping it's guard up, granting me a small measure of satisfaction.

"It would not do to compare this skin to the inferior model you injured earlier," Grace noted idly.

For all his supposed inferiority, my cyborg friend with the unusual dress sense _had_ successfully gotten the jump on me - the possibility of catching me by surprise was something this suit had failed to take advantage of. Not to mention the fact that Grace was currently talking her mouth off through it, something highly dangerous to be doing in this situation. Oh, she definitely thought she had me right where she wanted me.

"Goodbye, Mr. Emiya."

With that, the suit's hand came up again, a replica of the sub-machine gun he had just dropped clasped within it. Again, the hum of bullets sung past the spot I'd been standing at. Dodging bullets, as I'd learned decades ago, wasn't so much a matter of dodging the bullets in the air as it was reading the vector of the barrel and watching for the unavoidable twitches that heralded the trigger being pulled. Once you could read those, it was easy to move before the bullets were even coming.

Of course, this suit had faster reaction than the standard human, which made dodging a bit dicier than usual.

This time I'd launched myself higher onto the wall, reaching back down into my spiritual armoury to pull out a weapon more suitable for what I had in mind. I flooded odo through right hand as I leapt, constructing a sword of simple appearance. Decades of experience, wear and use were implanted into the sword in an instant as it was brought into being - a prefect copy of the original, made from the stuff of pure magecraft.

I gripped the sword by the hilt for a fraction of a second before a flick of my wrist sent it arcing towards the suit, who contemptuously dodged the projectile and brought his gun arm around to fire again...

The sword cut cleanly into the ground, just as I had anticipated. Suddenly the swinging gun arm was brought to an immediate halt as the power of the Black Key took effect - by piercing the suit's shadow to the ground, the Black Key immediately revoked the right of the suit to move under his own power.

I dropped back down to the alley floor directly in front of the suit, Tracing Kansho and Bukuya as I landed.

"Nanofabriaction unit to create a containment field expander," Grace said, an almost unnoticeable sliver of surprise threading through her voice. Otherwise she seemed entirely unworried about the current predicament of her mouthpiece. A touch of what I would describe almost as curiosity entered her tone. "Very impressive of you to get your hands on a piece of tech like this. . ."

It was apparent that Grace O'Connor and myself were on completely different wavelengths when it came to Artifacts, although I wasn't about to correct her. The more she incorrectly assumed about my methods, the more she would be surprised by them later.

"Sorry for overstaying my welcome, Ms. O'Connor," I told the suit, mimicking her earlier attempt to dismiss me, "but it's time to find out what's really happening here."

I kicked the suit in the chest, sending him flying back into the wall behind him. Just before the moment of impact, I drove Kansho through his left bicep and Bukuya through his right one, tearing muscle and spraying blood everywhere. They were calculated strikes - enough to hurt like hell and provide another couple of points to pin the suit down, but not enough to kill; in the short term, at least. Oddly enough, apart from a grunt as the air left his lungs, the suit didn't utter a single sound as he was forcefully pinned to the wall. No scream of pain, no nothing.

"Time to find out what you are," I said quietly to myself, reaching out with my hand and touching the hair of the immobile suit. Information from the Structural Grasp flooded into me, confirming several assumptions I had made about the suit. He was indeed a cyborg - almost half his brain had been replaced with electronics, including what I determined to be a high gain antenna. Sub-dermal armour plating was installed across a number of vital areas, and a second voice box had been installed. The spinal cord had been replaced with a high temperature superconductor, although to what purpose I could not tell, and his right arm below the elbow had been replaced with a flesh coated cybernetic arm.

There was something else there too, installed just beneath the diaphragm. Something that was composed of mostly… cyclotrimethylene trinitramine? Wired into a circuit that had just closed?

"Well played," I muttered in disgust, using my reinforced legs to propel me towards the rooftops. I had barely cleared the ledge of the six storey building I was aiming for when the C4 suicide bomb went off. I didn't bother to hang around, using my reinforced legs to clear several rooftops in the space of a few seconds before choosing a random building to enter and find a way down to ground level.

I didn't want to make too many assumptions, but the logical train of thought led me to believe that the suit was being remotely controlled by Grace O'Connor, using the secondary voice box to talk. The control seemed to be fairly dominant as well - pain sensors and feedback must have been shut off or non-existent, and there was next to no indication that an original personality existed inside the suit's mind.

I was aware that Grace was at least nominally implanted, but nominally the use of implants extended to browsing the net, as far as I understood. My poor understanding of higher level technology was unfortunately shining through here, as I had no idea what would be required in this day and age to so completely dominate and control a cyborg. It did impress upon me once again the level of ability Grace had with electronics though.

That little encounter also convinced me that whatever was going on, Grace was waist deep in it. She had all but admitted as much by letting me know I was getting too close to her secrets. So where did that take me? How deep was this little rabbit hole?

I wandered out the front door of the building I had been making my way down, idly noting that the blast had begun to attract attention, and if the distant wail of sirens was any indication, it was the attention of the local authorities as well. I began to casually meander back towards the hotel cafe where I had left ferret-face, although considering by the time I'd get back, nearly an hour would have passed since I left the place, I wasn't holding high hopes that he'd still be there with his crystal prize he'd won from the now dead suit.

Ugh. I was distracting myself. I still hadn't finished thinking about the situation that I was put in by Grace O'Connor.

I needed to prioritise getting in contact with Sheryl, with the caveat that I a) didn't need Grace to know I was doing so, and b) without having to resort to kidnapping. While that would be effective, sneaking away a galactic celebrity for a little bit of clandestine chat in some hidden dungeon somewhere would be bound to raise a few eyebrows among people who were legitimately trying to perform their security jobs. Not to mention that O'Connor would probably have my name out to the relevant authorities the moment it became apparent Sheryl was missing, whether I was actually involved or not. Despite the fact that if Sheryl was deeply involved with the Vajra I'd have to take her down, the net result for me would be the same; I'd have the whole Frontier convoy out for my blood – not an ideal position to be in.

Of course, seeing as I currently knew that she was out bugging the rest of my squad (or to be more precise, Saotome) on the island where the filming for the Bird Human movie was taking place, talking to her fairly soon was something I could accomplish easily. The real question was whether or not I could do so without the, well, _oversight,_ of Grace. I doubted she'd attack me in front of so many witnesses, but there were a lot of things I just didn't know about the woman.

I sighed as I continued my walk back up to the hotel. Nothing was ever simple when it came to my life. I was currently swimming around in at least three different plots, and trying to find any information to work out what was actually happening in any of them was like trying to untangle a kinked up hose – I'd get one knot undone, which only gave me access to another one to untangle.

There was really nothing for it unfortunately. Despite my observations and instincts telling me that Sheryl wasn't knowingly involved with the Vajra, I'd have to find an opportunity to find out for certain. I knew she trusted me a little, enough not to tell the world that I could create swords out of thin air (despite the fact that Grace was almost certain to know that by now after my little altercation less than twenty minutes ago), so maybe I could leverage that. I supposed it was even a point in her favour - the Gracebot did seem to be surprised when I performed my Gradation Air to create the Black Key, indicating that Grace had no prior knowledge of my abilities before my fight with her suit. And Sheryl did have an unusual urge to bug Saotome and myself at entirely inconvenient times. Maybe during one of those visits I could find a nice quiet office for a _serious_ chat about the general lethality of one's manager.

I guess that would have to do for the time being.

This brought me back to ferret-face. I knew I'd seen him somewhere before, but I still hadn't figured out where or when. I kept pondering the question all the way back to the hotel cafe, where sure enough, I found an overweight elderly couple at the table ferret-face had been occupying earlier rather than my new lead himself. I sat down to ponder the situation, and barely had been sitting for more than five minutes when I noticed a very conspicuous quintet of people enter the cafe.

The group drew a couple of startled stares from the tourists lounging around – hardly surprising given that four members of the group were wearing SMS jackets and the fifth was in a NUNS officer getup. I raised my hand to grab their attention, and the only male in the group noticed me first.

"Shirou," Captain Wilder said, acknowledging me and directing the attention of the rest of the Quarter's main bridge crew in my direction. "Mind if we join you?"

"Not at all Captain," I replied – it certainly would have been out of place to decline them, and there were no dangers that I could spot in the cafe at this particular point in time.

"What brings you guys out here?" I asked as the bridge crew found spare seats and dragged them to the table I was currently occupying.

"Enforced mental health day," the Captain said with a slight cough and a twinkle in his eye. I chuckled. Something was up.

"Which is to say," Lam cut in, "the Captain wants to go surfing, and the rest of us want to see the movie set!"

I glanced at the Captain, who coughed hurriedly, looking a touch put out with his wayward radar operator. Judging by the gleam in the old man's eye and the slight grin he was trying to hide behind his hand, most of that was for show.

"Most of the rest of us," Catherine Glass pointed out in the long suffering tones of someone who took her work seriously. I was suddenly reminded of her father's predicament, as well as his suggestion that maybe Catherine would be able to provide me some insight into the personalities on his staff.

"We didn't notice you complaining too hard," Captain Wilder noted mildly, that ghost of a grin still on his face. Catherine's face flushed a deep red at that point as she scrabbled to find excuses for her lack of resistance to the plan of heading down to the beach, an action which brought sly grins to everyone at the table.

"So if you came for a break, why the uniforms?" I asked idly, killing time as the group ordered some drinks.

And suddenly, I remembered where I'd seen ferret-face before.

Catherine's NUNS uniform must have flicked a switch in my subconscious somewhere, because thinking about it as I made my comment connected it to ferret-face. I'd last seen him wearing a very similar NUNS uniform in a top secret xeno-biology research facility on Island-Three, leading a team of government officials and NUNS officers around. Mina gave me an answer to my question about the uniforms, but my brain half-heartedly filed it away while I tried to visualise the scene. I had been stealing information from a few easily cowed scientists in a room with a view over the twenty metre tall corpse sample. At the bottom of the room I remember seeing ferret-face and using reinforcement of the eyes to read his name tag...

Leon Mishima! That was his name!

I came out of my 'eureka' moment to realise that the faces around the table were looking at me in expectation. I quirked my eyebrow upwards as I recalled and processed what Mina had said while I was on another train of thought (she was asking if I'd join them for a trip out to the island the film was being shot on). No doubt the others now thought I was more than a bit slow – I'd basically been sitting still with an undoubtedly goofy look on my face.

"Uh, I might avoid the filming island for now. I'm back here because I was feeling a bit crowded in over there," I replied with an apologetic shrug.

"Suit yourself," rumbled Captain Wilder, "that's where the best surfing is though."

I shrugged, hopefully indicating that I personally didn't find the idea of surfing to be too exciting. The conversation devolved into general bridge banter - stuff that I felt slightly left out of, but my general knowledge of SMS and my considerably in-depth knowledge of the majority of my fellow crew members characters meant I understood a fair few of the jokes being slung around at everyone's expense. Coffee for the bridge crew came and went, and despite the fact that I wouldn't be accompanying them over to the filming island, in the absence of anything better to do; I decided to follow them to the wharf.

Where they promptly discovered that the last boat over for today had left five minutes ago.

That didn't really bother them too much though. Carrying a surfboard in one hand, a kitbag strapped over his shoulder, and with crew in tow, Captain Wilder lead us to the nearest train station, declaring that he'd happily settle for second best. Again, I decided to tag along, remembering my late night discussion with Howard Glass and his opinion that maybe I might be able to glean some information into _his _problem by talking to his daughter Catherine. Despite the fact she was looking distinctly more uncomfortable with all the traipsing about their trip was forcing on her, she was still out here. And hell, given my streak of good luck today, she'd already have the plan bottled up and ready to talk to anyone willing to listen.

Another fifteen minutes later, we were disembarking at Jeffrey's Bay station.

Catherine looked like she was struggling a little bit more with her kit bag (which did look a bit fuller than the rest of the crew's), which gave me a good reason to hang back and help her. Of course, that wasn't my only reason for hanging around - with the rest of the bridge crew now a good couple of metres ahead of us and chatting loudly, now was as good a time as any to drag our feet so I could 'help' with her gear.

"Need a hand?" I enquired simply, causing her to jump a little as she realised I wasn't further ahead with the rest of the crew.

"Uh, no thanks, I think I've got it," she replied, her eyes darting about in a bit of a panic, and true to her words she finally managed to heft her bag into what seemed to be a comfortable position.

Why she appeared panicked for a brief second, I had no idea. It could have been something as simple as surprise seeing as I'd never really gotten a chance to just talk to her much, or it could have been something deeper. For a brief moment I wondered if she had suddenly realised I was the same person who had 'babysat' her when she was a couple of years old, under the guise of protecting Howard's family. Whatever it was, it was gone as quick as it came, and some careful probing would let me know if it would be safe to ask questions about her father's men. "So why'd you end up in the NUNS?" I asked, slipping easily into the personality of the congenial vet that was rapidly becoming my public persona within SMS.

"I, uh, I guess I mostly wanted to prove myself," she replied, a bit awkwardly, before lapsing into silence.

"To who?" I asked, wondering immediately if I was getting myself into another personal nutcase as soon as the words left my mouth. Alaya, let it not be so.

"To everyone, I guess. Everyone saw me as just a pretty face coming out of high school," she told me. Well, she definitely got that from her mother, but knowing her parents, Catherine was sitting on a genetic motherload of intelligence and political nouse. Surely joining the military wasn't necessary to prove that.

Instead of voicing that thought, I simply nodded. "Well, you must have showed them then," I said with a faked grin, "I've read your record, and there isn't much you could do to improve it."

"Y-you read my record?" the NUNS liaison asked quickly, her face flushing red for an instant.

"Well, yeah," I confirmed for her. "You were a new member of staff aboard the Quarter, and in addition you're effectively part of my mission control, so why wouldn't I have read it?"

Well, that and the fact that I was searching for discrepancies in her file. I was also just a little curious to see how the two year old I once 'babysat' had grown up. Ahead of us, the rest of the bridge crew had crested a small hill that lead to the beach, leaving Catherine and myself to play catch-up. We picked our pace up as Lam shouted some words of encouragement just before disappearing down the small hill of sand, and I wasn't at all surprised to find Monica, Lam and Mina racing ahead of Wilder, finding a spot to place their gear on the sparsely populated beach.

"I've read about you as well," she told me, that flush of red again staining her cheeks. "You've got quite the flight record."

That prompted a chuckle - not only was the file that she read fake, it would have been nowhere near indicative of my actual combat ability. I quickly covered the chuckle with quiet thanks, hoping that she took my mirth as some sort of plea for modesty.

"How did you end up attached to SMS anyway?" I asked the young woman as we approached a stand of umbrellas that had just been erected by the rest of the bridge crew. "Piss off the wrong people somewhere?"

"Not at all," she shot back quickly, sounding horrified at the thought that she might have gotten in someone's bad books. "SMS has a very high reputation within the NUNS, and when the opportunity came to volunteer to work with such talented people I was first in line!"

Her statement was met with a round of snorts from the assembled bridge crew, myself included.

"The NUNS higher ups might think highly of us, but SMS is a byword for privileged rich arseholes among the NCO's," replied Mina, saying what we were all thinking. "Is that what you were really thinking?"

For someone who was supposedly one of the best and brightest the NUNS had to offer, Catherine seemed a bit put out in social situations. Maybe she'd just sunk into the hierarchical based structure of the real military and was having trouble acclimatising to the more laid back nature of SMS interactions. Regardless, she coloured up a bit again.

"O-of course!" The brown haired woman declared hotly, regaining some initiative, "although I must admit the experience hasn't been quite what I expected."

"I'll bet it hasn't," said Captain Wilder with a knowing grin as he wedged the tail of his surfboard firmly into the sand, "but if you don't mind me, I'm going to get changed and hit the surf."

With that, the veteran Captain turned tail and made his way back up the hill to some changing sheds - which caused some general commotion as the rest of the bridge crew tried to sort out what they were going to do, effectively cutting our conversation with Catherine short. It was quickly decided that I would be staying to keep an eye on our gear while everyone else followed the Captain up the hill, a duty I managed to pull due to the fact I didn't bring any swimwear with me.

I spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the beach and gathering my thoughts while the rest of the bridge crew participated in beach activities. I was surprised to find out exactly how good Captain Wilder was on a surfboard – not that I had any skill in the matter to judge him properly, but there were twists and turns happening on every wave where I was expecting gentle rides in. He did look slightly out of place in an incredibly old fashioned striped full length swimsuit though. The rest of the girls split their time between swimming, splashing about and watching Captain Wilder on his board. Monica in particular seemed to spend a lot of time watching the Captain with a wistful look on her face. Good luck with that one, I thought. The age gap just seemed incredibly too severe for what I bet she was hoping for.

I was also slightly worried about a follow up attack from Grace, but we were in a populated area to a certain extent, so the chances of that were slim to none. As it turned out, I was right, and eventually the lighting banks in the Island's superstructure began to dim, simulating a sunset. The bridge crew began filter back to the stand of umbrellas and beach towels that marked our spot on the beach. Mina was the first back, apparently having grown bored of watching Monica make eyes at the Captain, who was still out on his board.

"Hope you weren't too bored Shirou," Mina said as between the pair of us we began folding up our umbrellas. "You kind of didn't have anything to do. . ."

It was thoughtful of her to enquire, to be sure, but I certainly wasn't doing nothing. I had been simultaneously cooling down from my fight with Grace's cyborg minion and keeping a keen eye out for those further interruptions that didn't eventuate, which effectively kept me quite busy – especially if you knew what you were looking for.

"I caught up on my thinking," I told her with a grin. That was partly true as well - I had spent a bit of time debating the merits of flat out asking Catherine what she knew about the people in her father's department. I had eventually decided against it, given that she hadn't _actually_ told me she was engaged to her father's aide, and the reason I'd be asking her would be to basically abuse that particular connection for information. She'd be well within her rights to be suspicious, which would lead me nowhere. I'd have to wait until she volunteered that bit of information _that I already knew_ before I could ask her safely about it - and that sort of inefficiency annoyed me.

"Sure," Mina replied with a laugh as she brought an umbrella clattering into the sand. "That doesn't sound weird at all."

"No more weird than the bridge crew of one of the most advanced combat ships known to human kind taking a day off to go peer on their workmates while they make a movie," I replied with a good natured shrug, eliciting another chuckle.

"What's so funny?" Catherine demanded, as her, Lam and Monica strode up the beach to join in the cleaning effort. Behind them in the water I spotted Captain Wilder paddling out for one more wave.

"We were just discussing the relative normality of certain activities," Mina replied on behalf of both of us. Ram, Monica and Catherine all looked anything but understanding, but didn't bother following up on that line of thought, instead helping us quickly strike camp. Captain Wilder came up while the girls were up at the change sheds, exchanging their swimsuits for their uniforms for the trip back to Quarter.

"Good waves," the greying Captain noted gruffly as he simply threw a jacket and a pair of pants over his striped swimwear, not even bothering to dry off properly before heading off to the changing sheds.

Oddly enough, it was times like these that made me feel that the path I had chosen for my life was not the wrong path to take. Sure - I was perfectly balanced on a slippery slope that ended up in Counter-Guardian-hood without a lot of wiggle room. Sure, I regretted selling my mortality to save Rin only for her to die a few months later anyway. But my efforts up until now had allowed people to survive in a world where a lot of things had it out for them - to survive and enjoy their life, and enjoy their choices. It was a steep price to pay, and that was a fact, but it was _also_ a fact that only I had to pay it, and the benefit applied to the whole of the human race. Seeing people live their lives happily in front of me was something I often didn't pay attention to - but when I stopped to think about it, it definitely lightened my mood.

Sometimes, it _was _the little things that mattered.

"Looked like you were having fun," I replied, with about as much unforced emotion as I'd used since I'd arrive on Frontier. "Now, we'd better get this gear up the hill before those ladies start giving us crap about it."

The trip back to the hotel was uneventful, although I did take to opportunity to integrate myself into the group a little more with small talk. I also was on the end of a more than a few dirty jokes regarding my so-called conquest of Ramaria, proving to me yet again that the beast known as rumour is a powerful force in a workplace environment. Out of the lot of them, apart from Captain Wilder (who I was already reasonably familiar with), I found myself getting along with Mina and Lam, who were more laid back than Monica and Catherine. That particular development wasn't the best possible outcome for my plan of working Catherine for information, but it was not bad by any means.

We were almost at the stop for the hotel when I realised that not only could I be questioning Catherine about the people working in her father's department, but I could also use her for knowledge about the local NUNS forces - in particular, ferret face. It was one of those sudden flashes on insight that pop up when you've been focussing on a problem for a while, and then take a step back to have a break. Given she was far less likely to be suspicious about me asking about people who she worked with on a regular basis as opposed to those on her father's staff, asking about ferret face… wait… Leon Mishima was his name, wasn't it? Well, that might prove productive. At the very least, there'd bound to be some rumours floating around about him.

"Hey Catherine, you know a lot about the high rankers in the NUNS yeah?" I asked, feeling the waters somewhat. There'd be no point asking about it if she spent too much time being a good little officer to listen to scuttlebutt.

"For the last time Shirou, you can call me Cathy," she chided me, carrying on a joke that had been running all afternoon. "But yes, I know a few things about the local command."

"What do you know about a guy called Leon Mishima? I heard he's in charge of local military research on the Vajra, or something close." I hadn't heard that at all actually - it was an educated guess I'd made after remembering how he was heading a menagerie of soldiers when I infiltrated the xeno-biology research labs on Island Three a while ago.

Catherine suddenly blushed harder than I'd seen her do all afternoon (quite a feat, to be honest - poor Catherine responded delightfully well to the teasing of the rest of the bridge crew), which in turn made everyone else suddenly interested in our conversation. Odd. And frustrating. I was hoping to keep this conversation casual enough that the rest of the crew would brush it off as being too boring for their liking.

"L-Leon Mishima is my father's aide and liaison of the NUNS to the office of the president," she squeaked, and I felt my jaw drop open.

I could see why she was blushing, and I could barely believe it. That would mean…

"Wait, are we talking about the same guy?" I asked in surprise, finally regaining control of my mouth. "Brown hair, horrible face, kind of looks like a ferret?"

"That's him," Catherine replied woodenly, and I immediately began cursing myself internally. Size 12 boot, meet mouth.

The awkward silence was broken as Lam and Mina burst into peals of laughter. Thanks a lot guys.

Although I guess I should be thankful that they didn't know that Catherine was engaged to him. She hadn't explicitly said that they were engaged yet, which was a _very _interesting omission and could mean a number of things. Things that I'd have to go over later once I'd steered this line of enquiry back to safer ground.

"So, he's not involved in Vajra research then?" I asked quickly.

"Not directly," she replied quickly, apparently as eager as I was to keep this conversation moving towards it's end point. "But because he ends up relaying all the information we gain to the President, he does tend to know a bit. Why do you ask?"

"I just like to be kept in the loop, and I'd seen his name on some of the reports floating around about the Vajra," I said, perhaps a bit nebulously. To be fair, I had seen his name on exactly _one_ report, but surely Catherine didn't run over every report that came down to the pilots. Surely she wouldn't have the intel to call me on my bluff. Surely not. I hope.

"Well, if there is something in particular you'd like to know, perhaps I can ask him," she replied, although the look on her face implied that she'd rather do anything but. Whether that was because she didn't want me asking or she didn't want to talk to Mishima was up for interpretation however.

"No, I'm good, just curious," I responded quickly, thankful enough she didn't spot my rather weak lie. "Thanks though."

With that, we were both happy to let the conversation drop, and a minute later I was leaving the Captain and his bridge crew on the train back to Island One while I got off at the stop for the hotel.

As I made my way back from the station in the now starlit early night, I tried to determine if there were any other hints I may have missed in that brief conversation. The fact that I saw ferret-face Leon Mishima meeting with Grace's cyborg mouthpiece more than likely meant he was involved with her plot - although whether that was as a partner, minion or superior I couldn't tell at the moment. That would make things a bit more complicated, given my new information that he was also Howard's aide. It suddenly made Howard's issue a bit more pressing - I'd have to try and tease out whether or not Mishima was also the one making Howard dance to his tune. Ugh. That would require more time, effort and snooping.

Or maybe not.

Howard certainly wasn't lacking in intelligence, and even if he couldn't openly act against whatever was happening in his office, he had demonstrated he was capable enough to investigate it. Maybe I could give him the name and let the President of Frontier determine if the man he was chasing was indeed Mishima. It sounded like a fairly solid idea, so I made a mental note to get in touch with Howard as soon as possible.

There was also the fact that Catherine had neglected to mention that she was engaged to Leon Mishima when we were on the train. Without knowing the context of why she chose to withhold that information however, that could have meant anything. The list of reasons I could come up with ran from the possibility that Mishima and Catherine were well in cahoots with each other right up to the possibility that she was simply too embarrassed (or professional) to be mixing her private life with work. Until I understood that situation better, I'd have to be on my guard around her - hell, even if she was relatively innocent, her mentioning our conversation to Mishima could well put him on his guard against me. That would ruin my greatest advantage I had when dealing with Mishima - the fact that he didn't know I existed.

Or maybe not. If he was mixed up with Grace, then depending on their relationship, it was possible that she had plans to pass on information about me, if she hadn't already.

This certainly wasn't getting any less complicated, I realised. It didn't take me long to find my way back to my hotel room and I swung the door open, only to find it already occupied by Saotome, Mikhail and Luca.

"Hello, hello, hello," I said with a nod to each of my squad-mates. Mikhail and I were splitting a twin room in order to reduce costs (the producer clearly being a fan of remaining on the good side of his creditors), so I wasn't that surprised to find him and Luca there. Saotome though… he was currently technically attached to Sheryl through the company for the time being, so I expected him to have been hanging around with her for a while.

"How was the filming?" I asked, deciding that I could easily figure out why he was here in casual conversation.

"It was heaps of fun," enthused Luca as he pulled away from a holo he was looking at. "There's so much to do and see at a movie set!"

* * *

As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with a busy day – it was pretty eventful out at the filming island as well. The producer was apparently big fan of Saotome's character in one of his earlier kabuki plays, which got our blue haired pilot instant recognition - and some desperate pleading to take a part in the movie. Saotome being Saotome with his well… _history_… immediately shut them down, but reconsidered after continual pleading from Elmo, Ranka's manager - Mikhail mentioned with a smirk that he was on his hands and knees for nearly an hour as they offered to increase Ranka's role if Saotome accepted a position. Eventually he relented and took a stunt double position for the lead actor, who by the sounds of things was being a bit of a prima donna and claiming underwater shots weren't in his contract.

The more interesting news came after that though. Saotome took over from Mikhail's animated storytelling right after the young playboy pilot mentioned that Ranka had gone missing. That immediately caught my attention, as I was aware that the Vajra apparently found Ranka interesting enough to capture, as opposed to squashing like a bug - which in turn meant that Grace O'Connor would have her reasons to be interested in the girl. Provided they weren't already in cahoots. The truth though, had been a bit less noir, even if it was just as unsettling. Saotome had found our Squad Commander's younger sister on a cape barely a kilometre from the main filming beach, singing. As he approached, some sort of unidentifiable four legged beast charged out the jungle at Ranka, prompting the blue haired pilot to draw his gun and fire upon it. Apparently it was moving so fast it was hard for Saotome to land a hit, but I found it more likely that his lack of ability at the target range was a larger factor in that. Regardless, the ineffectual shots did manage to draw the attention of the creature, which in Saotome's own words 'batted us about like a you might flick a bug from your shirt'.

That was the point where 'a blonde haired weirdo in a purple jumpsuit' stepped out of the tree line.

"Wait, what?" I interjected.

"A blonde haired wierdo in a purple jumpsuit," Saotome repeated for me, in a tone that reminded me of a mother telling her child that yes, if you stick your hand in the beehive, you will get stung.

"And he did what?" I asked. Could this guy Saotome was talking about be . . .?

"I was getting to that bit," the rookie pilot grumbled. "He popped out of the treelike as the animal closed in on Ranka, and made a ridiculous leap of at least twenty metres to put himself between the animal and Ranka."

Impossible leap for a normal human, blonde hair, purple jumpsuit. . . Things were definitely sounding pretty familiar. I wanted to interject but decided to save my questions for the end of the story – if I kept interrupting him, Saotome might get curious as to why I was doing so.

"He smashed it right in the face, which also sent it flying straight through a chunk of rock."

"This part smells of bullshit by the way," Mikhail warned me, wearing an amused grin.

"Shut it Michel," Saotome warned, although his voice lacked it's usual fire. This apparently being the side effect of the pair getting along better - or a result of having had this argument before at least. "Anyways, the beast stood up, charged the wierdo, who _extended a knife_ _from his arm!"_

"Implanted then," I said flatly. I didn't matter if Mikhail thought Saotome was full of shit, I was certain he wasn't. And I knew exactly who he'd run into. The evidence was far too stacked for this to be a coincidence – it was definitely my new friend.

Saotome gave me a weird look, although for the life of me I couldn't decipher it. "Anyway," he continued. "There was a blur, and suddenly the beast was in two perfect halves, sliced right down the middle."

Sounded about right. My new friend was a combat machine after all – even the most ferocious wild animals wouldn't stand a chance against him.

"He told me his name then left, leaving me to haul Ranka back to camp," Saotome concluded, and I just couldn't stop my jaw from dropping.

"He told you his _name?_"

I couldn't believe it. I'd spent weeks chasing up information about my new cyborg friend and had nothing to show for it, and suddenly he runs into our resident rookie and bam! He's gives up his name. Saotome gave me a funny look.

"Well, I asked for it," the blue haired pilot told me, a touch of confusion threading into his tone.

I had just managed to pack my jaw back up into it's usual resting position when I heard that statement, and it took a monumental amount of willpower to keep it there.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "You're getting beaten up by a, for lack of a better word, monster. Then someone with combat implants, which are _illegal_ on Frontier I might add, turns said monster into cold cuts. And you ask his name before he disappears into the night?"

So I was feeling a bit put out, more than a bit. Sure, I knew that what Saotome was telling me was more than likely true, or at least collaborated with my own gathered evidence. But! The rookie is not supposed to _stumble onto information I'd been trying for weeks to obtain!_

"Look, I know it sounds stupid," Saotome began, sounding defensive, "but that's what happened! I took Ranka back to the set and she thought I'd saved her."

I rolled my eyes and raised my eyebrows, hoping that everyone in the room would interpret it as me plainly not believing his story, when in actual fact it was because it was the least violent way I could express my disbelief at his ridiculous luck.

"So, what was his name?" I asked, still using a tone of voice which conveyed the disbelief I was feeling. Although it probably sounded more than a bit sarcastic.

"Brera Stern," the blue haired pilot responded curtly.

"I'll look him up for you," I replied, injecting more sarcasm into my voice, trying to convince him that I wasn't really interested. Saotome gave me a funny look, but as our eyes met I saw a glimmer of recognition there and started cursing myself internally. In my general surprise at the situation, I'd completely forgotten the former actor could see straight through my act.

Regardless, he kept his silence, for which I was thankful - I didn't need Mikhail or Luca knowing that I was hiding things.

At this point, Luca took over the narration from Saotome.

"Anyway, when Ranka and Alto-sempai came back, the director was all over them! Apparently he'd heard Ranka singing on the cape and wanted to use her song for the movie!"

As usual, our young L.A.I. liaison was overly bubbly, as though trying to make up for a rift he perceived to be forming between Saotome and myself. I masked a small grin and nodded at the youngest member of our squadron, urging him to continue.

"So she got promoted to play the part of Mao Nome! Apparently the previous actor had gotten into some sort of accident…" The young boy frowned at that, as if wondering if there was more to that story than what he'd heard, but continued on. "Ranka's going to be a serious star!"

Luca continued talking, but I was already listening with only half an ear as I sunk into my thoughts. I personally had my doubts that a single bump up the actor relevance chain would catapult the younger Lee sibling to stardom, but nodded anyway. Truth be told I was still more interested in what Saotome had said, despite us having left that part of the conversation for the time being. Now that I'd gotten over my surprise (and indignation) that Saotome had met my new friend, or Brera, I should say, I was starting to think about what else he'd mentioned.

To be precise, that my cyborg friend appeared when Ranka was in trouble. He'd either just arrived at the scene, or was biding his time until Saotome had proved insufficient to deal with the threat. The first would have been pure coincidence in the timing, the second spoke volumes about some sort of connection between Grace and Ranka. The problem was, which was it? I had no evidence either way. And, I doubt Saotome was in the frame of mind to notice at the time.

Additionally, even if this Brera had just arrived on the scene, what was he doing there? It was more than likely he was tailing them - no-one takes leisurely walks around the jungle to defend local passers-by from deadly fauna.

Something was fishy here, and suddenly I really found myself hoping that he was trying to investigate SMS instead of several alternatives that quickly ran through my mind. I _really_ didn't want Ranka to be involved in all of this.

Almost as soon as that thought broke my consciousness, a memory of Ranka being kidnapped by a red Vajra drone breached the ocean of my memory.

Dammit! There's too much circumstantial evidence for me to ignore.

"… so it looks like we're going to be busy all week," Luca finished up happily, and I quickly replayed the half heard monologue from my squad-mate in my head. Right, he'd just talked about the filming schedule.

"And release in a month yeah?" I asked quickly, to show that I'd been paying attention. I didn't know much about the film industry these days, but that seemed a little fast to the me who stopped paying attention in the late 2000's.

Luca nodded, continuing his tirade, and I continued to ponder the issues that had come up today, namely Grace O'Connor and how to get Sheryl informed of her manager's intent, how to deal with Leon Mishima (or if I'd have to deal with him at all), and how to start diving into Ranka's connection with this all.

* * *

Despite the rate at which that day had progressed, the next week passed slowly. There were no Vajra attacks, and thankfully the Pixie's were on standby for the week, which meant they couldn't come out here to distract me. Having said that, I did receive a hail of texts from an obviously bored Ramaria, and a few emails from Nene, who politely enquired if I could get a few autographs for her.

I had palmed that job off to Mikhail, because with Grace around on the filming island, my ability to go to the set was effectively sealed. I knew she was up to something, she knew I was on to her, she _also_ knew I was interested in Sheryl, but I wasn't sure if she knew exactly what Sheryl knew about me. The smart money was on 'no' at the start of the week, but who knew now?

So as much as I wanted to get onto the island for a quick chat to Sheryl, it was a fairly safe bet that Grace would be monitoring me the minute I stepped on set. In addition, the more time I spent in contact with Grace, the higher the chance I'd inadvertently let something slip about myself. I unfortunately had no choice but to respect her abilities when it came to electronics and intelligence gathering, and that was that. I also still had no idea when, or if, her next cyborg friend would be trying to take my life.

I did get a chance to pass on Leon Mishima's name to President Glass in my downtime though, so hopefully he'd be able to clean up that mess by himself, and if I was really lucky, he'd also be able to find out if Mishima was connected to the Vajra or Grace in any way. I wasn't holding my breath though, and planned to stick my nose into his business if I couldn't safely get my nose into Grace's business.

The filming itself was apparently finished with more than a touch of drama, at least according to Luca's updates. Apparently stuntman Saotome had a kissing scene with Ranka which caused a bit of a stir among them and Sheryl. As a small bonus, the scuttlebutt around SMS suddenly stopped revolving around Ramaria and myself, at least for a little bit.

Eventually, the week dragged into two, then into a month. I couldn't get in touch with Sheryl despite my best attempts. Without the tracker in her bag, I couldn't just follow her at whim, and of course it would be impossible to get a quiet word with the diva at any of her public events. I even tried staking out her hotel for a couple of days, but she was always escorted in and out, in complete defiance of everything I'd learnt about her movement habits up until now. Looks like Grace was cracking down on security, to my detriment.

Speaking of Grace, I was still considerably in the dark about her plans. I didn't want to risk approaching her just yet, and she certainly didn't slip up when I attempted to figure out what she was doing by more circuitous methods. She also had apparently wised up to the fact that sending out hit men (hit bots?) out to kill me would more than likely waste resources. It was frustrating that she was playing this defensive, but not unexpected.

Eventually the month ground to an end, and SMS's mascot, one Miss Ranka Lee, suddenly found herself very popular with the release of the Legend of Zero, a movie based on the Mayan Island incident. I certainly wouldn't call her rise meteoric, because I'm certainly not prone to hyperbole, but it did seem like an awfully short time between her being a struggling performer and an instantly recognisable celebrity, all thanks to one role in a movie. I was honestly surprised at how big of a crowd was at her premier (SMS having obtained tickets due to our role in providing equipment and impromptu actors), and how much of a cheer she got when presented to the crowd. She got more applause than Sheryl, which was something any critic of the industry would be sure to take note of; that was for sure.

One bonus about her growing popularity was that it had spawned a horde of rabid fans that were more than willing to dig up information on her day and post it all around the net, saving me the time and effort of keeping up to date with her daily movements and engagements. In addition her close relationship with SMS meant that she was often around, which made it relatively easy to get one of my trackers into her school backpack. All together, keeping an eye on Ranka wasn't difficult, but unfortunately there was no movements (that I could pick up on at least) to imply that she was working with Grace, or at least that Grace had her eye on the young girl.

All in all, I could feel myself growing despondent. No recent Vajra attacks meant that I had no new leads to investigate, and my current leads were either turning up nothing or stonewalling me hard. Hell, I'd even pressed Luca on the whole fold quartz thing, whatever that was, but he stubbornly held his ground, claiming his brothers hadn't authorised him to hand out that information yet. For such a gossip, he could be remarkably tight lipped when he wanted to be, and of course I couldn't force the information out of him without inciting a falling out with SMS and possibly public incarceration. I fell into a melancholic daily routine whereupon I'd wake up, hit the simulators in the morning, train with Nene in the dojo during lunch, and then spend my hours on standby in the ready room, browsing the net for any new information. It was boring, it was dull, but there was literally nothing I could do about it.

All that changed four days after the movie premier. It was early evening, and Skull squadron was on standby in the ready room when Ozma's phone went off. The rest of us cocked our heads in curiosity towards the greying Squad Commander as he answered.

"This is Ozma."

There was a slight pause as whoever was on the other end of the line said their piece. Ozma's eyebrow went up.

"Wait, who?" he asked quickly.

Another pause.

"Thought that's what you said. On my way, just keep her there."

Ozma snapped his phone shut and gave us as a group a long suffering stare. I just held his eye - we all knew we were listening in to his phone conversation. Finally he sighed.

"Shirou, you're with me. Sheryl Nome has just rocked up at our front door, in disguise."

* * *

_Author's notes:_

Well, I don't know what to say. Sorry for taking such a long time would be a good start I suppose. This chapter was born of stop-start-stop-start writing over like what, 6 months? I must have re-read this so many times to remind myself of what I was actually doing earlier in the piece! Despite that, it still feels like a chapter cut into parts with wierd characterisation, especially the last section – I said to myself at the start of the week that it was time to finish this, and I started running out of time, so I started time lapsing. I was so intent on getting this out before the weekend I skipped my usual proofreader Vandenbz (sorry mate), and even then I was a day late and ended up finishing on election day :p

Plotwise, I enjoyed seeing Shirou connect several dots, but I didn't enjoy the logical conclusion of his unfortunate direct encounters with Grace O'Connor's minions – the fact that she shuts up shop and closes off his access to the plot points he needs to advance. I just felt that at this stage of the game, Grace has her networks in place as well as her ability to get digital better than damn near anyone in the universe, so she's entitled to stay ahead of our poor hero in the information stakes. Makes for boring writing, hence the skip of about a month :p

One big thing for me this time was getting a review from Gabriel Blessing – I mentioned right in the first chapter of Wings that this was inspired by his work, so it was nice to have him drop an encouraging comment in. Not going to lie, it motivated me for a good week or so and I thought I was going to get a quick chapter out, but then the usual social life dragged me back into it's clutches.

Thanks for reading, and see you guys next chapter!


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